• Member Portal
  • Find an Insurer
Conference

Insurance Basics

A trusted voice within the insurance industry

  • What Is Insurance?

Insurance is a promise to pay a sum of money to compensate for the economic loss of a person or an asset as a result of some misfortune. For example, the death of a Breadwinner or the destruction of property, such as a house or car, may occur due to illness.

Insurance Is the Pooling of Risks

Simply put, insurance involves a group of persons paying funds into a pool so that if and when someone has a financial loss, there is money in the pool to compensate the person for the loss. It is based on the principle that persons suffer losses at different times. The oldest insurance scheme on record is one set up for Roman Soldiers to provide for families of those who died in battle.

Classes of Insurance

LIFE INSURANCE

  1. Whole Life/ Term Insurance
  2. Investment-linked Insurance
  3. Health Insurance
  4. Critical Illness Insurance

GENERAL INSURANCE

  1. Motor Insurance
  2. Property Insurance
  3. House & Contents Insurance
  4. Business Insurance

Insurance and The Jamaican Consumer

A good financial Plan without Insurance will fail if there is a misfortune such as death, disability, ill health, hurricane, car accidents, terminal illness, fire, flood, earthquake, etc. Unfortunately, no one is immune to these risks of living and them unpredictable. Only Insurance Companies provide these services.

  1. Only about 29 % of the Jamaican Workforce has individual insurance.
  2. Only one-third of the workforce and a quarter of the population have Group Health Insurance.
  3. Of the over 600,000 houses in Jamaica, only about 130,000 are insured or just over 20 %.
  4. Only 75 % of the vehicles on the road are insured.
  5. Only 9.2% of Jamaica’s workforce is currently a part of a registered pension plan, and just over 40% are members of the NIS Scheme.