Insurer
‘Insurer’ (sometimes called the insurance provider, insurance company or underwriter) refers to a company that provides various types of insurance policy to indemnify individuals, groups, organisations, government agencies and other bodies. Such insurance policies can provide cover – and may pay out – in cases of ill health, job loss, accidents, theft, property damage, professional liability and other instances where individuals and companies may face heavy losses if uninsured.
The insurance policy is a sort of contract stipulating the conditions under which the insurer promises to compensate the insured (those who have purchased a policy) against a stated loss or losses.
For more information see: Insurance.
The insurer is not the same as the insurance broker or agent. The latter advises those seeking to buy insurance, arranges cover and passes on the ‘premium’ (plus commission for their effort) to the insurer.
Recent times have seen many small, high street brokers put out of business, as insurance can now often be arranged directly with insurers over the internet.
Insurance Policyholder Taxation Manual, published by HM Revenue & Customs on 19 March 2016, suggests that underwriter might be:
- an insurer, anyone who accepts an insurance risk (from the act of writing one’s name under the details of the risk set out in the policy);
- an individual who, on behalf of an insurer, determines the acceptability of an insurance or reinsurance risk and specifies the terms on which the risk can be accepted;
- in the Lloyd’s market, an active underwriter is the person who runs a syndicate and accepts risks on behalf of the members of the syndicate.
It suggests that a leading underwriter in the Lloyd’s market is: ‘…one of the experts in a particular type of business; a broker seeing cover presents the slip in the first place to a leading underwriter who sets the premium and signifies the extent of participation in the risk by syndicates on whose behalf he/she is authorised to accept risks; other underwriters are obliged to follow the lead as regards the rate of premium.’
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