How Do You Keep Yours?

During my very first week in the insurance business my training manager asked the class to define insurance. We had a lot of bright people in my class and there were immediate responses from quite a few of us….
 
“Insurance is the pooled sharing of a common risk in order to…blah, blah, blah…”

“Insurance is the application of actuarial science to a quantifiable risk…blah, blah, blah…”

And so it went.

When we were all through showing off our brilliance, the manager looked at us and said, “Insurance is a promise to pay. Nothing more, nothing less.” And he was right. When you cut through all the math and legalities, every insurance policy says the exact same thing: “If you suffer this type of a loss, we promise to pay.”

Which got me thinking….

As an employer (even if your only employee is you), as a spouse, as a parent or grandparent, as a member of a community or a house of worship, as a member of a service organization, we are all connected to others in dozens of different ways. Some of those connections put us in positions of trust or responsibility (or both)…positions that cause us to make promises. Promises to our kids, spouses, employees, and others. Promises to ourselves, too.

For example, parents want to promise financial security for their children. Employers often want to promise medical security or paycheck security for their employees. A self-employed person wants to promise herself that she’ll be financially secure if she can’t work or wants to retire. Sometimes, we even promise something of value to a favorite charity, house of worship, school, or membership organization when we’re gone.

How do you keep your promises?

Keeping promises can be a very expensive proposition, and sometimes your promises need to be fulfilled at the worst possible moment, long before we ever thought they would come due.

So we can sit here and do an intellectual analysis of the “promise process”, actuarial science, and the technical, legal aspects of insurance policies, but in the end, my responsibility, our responsibility at Health Insurance Express and WorldWide, is to make it a little easier for you to keep all the promises that you make to the important people in your lives. The rest is mere details.

Thanks for reading.

Alan Leafman, Agent/Blogger
Toll Free: 800-955-0418
E-Mail Info@h-ie.com or info@wwins.com