Casualty insurance

From ArticleWorld

Casualty insurance may be defined as a type of insurance that protects property owners or other people from loss or injury sustained as a result of theft, vandalism or similar occurrences. It is a kind of insurance that covers all kinds of insurance areas except those dealing with life, property or health of the insured. This type of insurance is also concerned with the legal liability for losses caused by injury to others or damage to property of others. It may include such diverse areas like crime insurance, boiler and machinery insurance, plate glass insurance or aviation insurance.

Main types

An important type of casualty insurance is business continuance insurance used in conjunction with a buy-sell agreement to help a surviving partner pay the deceased partner’s interest. Without this protection many partnerships have been forced to sell assets, close businesses, lose credit and goodwill.

Another type of casualty insurance is liability insurance which is a part of general insurance and is calculated to give precise protection against third party claims. Thus, it makes payments not to the insured but rather to the party that has suffered a loss.

A third kind of casualty insurance is political risk insurance which is taken out by business houses of countries which are politically unstable or are beset by political violence, like terrorism, civil unrest, war or even revolution. This insurance covers the risk of such an occurrence taking place.

Terrorism insurance, another type of casualty insurance that bears certain similarities to the political risk insurance, is taken out by property owners of politically unstable countries for fear that their property might be destroyed due to terrorism, or civil unrest etc.