Insurance money

“ It is well known that the business of insurance is entered upon with the expectation that the premiums received will pay all losses and yield a profit to the insurance in addition; and yet, without any showing that the business did not result in a profit to these insurance claimants, it is proposed that the Government shall indemnify them against the precise risks they undertook, notwithstanding the fact that the money appropriated is not to be paid except "by way of gratuity—payments as of grace and not of right." ”

“ You have paid the full cost of your insurance for the years it has been in force, and have contributed a reserve which, in part, is to meet the expense of later years. If you drop your policy, obviously, justice demands that you take this reserve cost with you. If it is not paid back, clearly you have contributed money for which you have received no insurance equivalent. Inasmuch as a mutual company ostensibly seeks to furnish insurance at its actual cost and give value received for every penny paid in, surrender values are an essential part of its structure. ”

“ The assured assumes the risk of paying premiums during the life on which the insurance is taken, even though their aggregate amount should exceed the insurance money. He also takes the risk of the forfeiture of his policy if the premiums are not paid on the day they fall due. ”

“ I know that this man is dying; I know that, if I pay this premium, the company will have to pay out the full amount of the insurance within a few days; I know that the premiums paid to date amount to only about five hundred or six hundred dollars, which, under the terms of the policy, the woman will not wholly lose. For me, an employee, to conspire to 41 get the rest of the money for her would be like taking it from the cash drawer. I won’t do it; I can’t do it after Murray’s talk to me to-day about business integrity! ”

“ The insurance premium is payable monthly with the payment on the loan, the association turning it over to the insurance company, and undertaking to adjust the payments if the latter's premium periods do not coincide. The face of the policy is made payable to the loan association which, in case of death, takes from the insurance money the amount remaining unpaid on the mortgage, and gives the widow the balance with a deed for an unencumbered home. ”

“ The insurance company invests and reinvests the premiums, and the total of these, it is estimated, will meet the expenses and the amount of the policy at the time of its calculated expiration.
AS AN INVESTMENT If the young man in question had the money, he would find it to his advantage to buy a paid up policy, that is one on which no further premiums would be required.
But, having the money for a paid up policy, could not the young man, without any expense for clerk hire or rent, invest it, and reinvest it with the interest, as long as he lived, and thus make by insuring himself? ”

“ II. Every person designing to insure, shall before surveying the goods, pay 10s. earnest money, to go towards the charge of insuring, if agreed to, and the policy be taken up within three months after, otherwise the said 10s. is sunk to the society: but if the directors do not agree to such insurance, the earnest money to be returned. Also old policies directed to be renewed, and not taken away within three months are also to be cancelled, and the charge of the policies and stamps of such renewals deducted out of the deposit-money of such insurers. ”

“ It is a crime under the law to give back or rebate part of the premium on a life insurance policy. Now many a man could be induced to insure his life if he could get back the first year's premium. All you have got to do is to tell him that you are an insurance agent and will give it back—and then put the money in your own pocket, for he will have given you the premium for an illegal purpose—that is to say, with the idea of having it paid back to him contrary to law. ”

“ Above all, unless all its 1,000 members join spontaneously, it must have a lively force of insinuating gentlemen to persuade them in—that is, life insurance agents. All these things, especially the agency force, cost money. For want of a better system the association clumsily adds to every premium a certain annual sum to provide a special fund to meet these expenses. ”

“ Of course there is a certain amount of loading in the premiums he pays, but for the purposes of our illustration, that need not be considered. In this plan, the policy holder is really insuring himself, and when he dies his beneficiary, or estate, simply receives back the money he has paid in. The fact that there are so many life insurance companies and that they have become so wealthy and powerful, illustrates the power of interest, especially when it is compounded. ”

“ And if the value of an article be partially insured, and receive damage by fire, the society is bound to make restitution only to the extent of the sum for which the premium is paid.
III. For lives: by virtue of which, on the demise of the party insured, a sum of money becomes due to the person for whose benefit the insurance was made. ”

“ If all the members were 36 years of age, on the whole $680,848,000 insurance in force there would be lost by lapse, at thirty-six years, $251,923,760 annually. Now in honest insurance there should be no lapses or forfeitures and in the insurance of the future there will be nothing of the kind. But on this plan, no matter how long one has paid, or how much he has paid in, if he stops paying, he loses all. Misfortune or accident may compel him to stop paying, but no matter what may be the cause, he loses, and other persons dying quickly have had the benefit of the money he has paid in. ”

“ For one reason, a life insurance policy is not expensive. You might as well talk of the expense of buying bank stock, or the expense of putting your money into a savings bank or any other safe place as to speak of the expense of keeping up a life insurance policy. It is accumulation and not expense. Every dollar put into life insurance is a dollar saved to yourself or your estate. ”

“ Insurance Agency.—Insurance, both fire and life, is a mine of wealth, and has opened wondrously during the last few years. The present magnitude of the business is shown by the statement that there are $2,500,000,000 invested in life insurance in the United States, while the fire insurance agents last year wrote more than $16,000,000,000. There are seven men who have an aggregate of $7,000,000 on their lives. ”

“ When the sum insured is large, a higher premium per cent. is demanded; and money, papers, pictures, gunpowder, and jewels, are excluded.—If an article be falsely described, in order that it may be insured at a lower premium, the policy is justly void. An insurance made on the same subject at different offices, must be specified by indorsement on the policy; and, in case of loss, the offices pay a sum in proportion ”

“ The payment of these equities is no more than life-insurance justice; anything else, in a mutual company, is little better than robbery,
1↑ The figures are those paid at present by the Equitable. Family Protection a Stake in a Huge Gamble Under the Tontine plan you forfeited, on lapse, your whole money interest in the policy. This surrender value was usually paid, not in cash, but in insurance. Thus, if forced out, you obtained, in addition to the insurance during the period the policy ran, a paid-up policy which was the insurance equivalent of your reserve accumulation. ”

“ Dependents left without a breadwinner will be exposed to sore distress if life insurance payments are extracted slowly and painfully, after costly contests in the courts. Health and accident insurance will often be the sources from which the sick and the disabled are to meet their weekly bills. Fire insurance moneys, if withheld, may leave the business man or the householder without an office or a home. ”

“ It is true that the theory of our Constitution is, that all taxes are paid voluntarily; that our government is a mutual insurance company, voluntarily entered into by the people with each other; that each man makes a free and purely voluntary contract with all others who are parties to the Constitution, to pay so much money for so much protection, the same as he does with any other insurance company; and that he is just as free not to be protected, and not to pay tax, as he is to pay a tax, and be protected. ”

“ But, on the contrary, when the dividends have been anticipated, as in the note system, by giving a note for part of the premium, the policy-holder insuring in this way, although he may at first receive a larger policy than he has the ability to pay for in cash, may lose the chief benefit of life insurance. For should he become unable, either by age, disease, or loss of property, to continue the payment of his premiums, his policy must lapse, because there is no accumulation of profits to his credit on which it can be continued. ”

“ The net value of the policy, when the premium becomes due, and is not paid, shall be computed * * * and after deducting from three-fourths of such net value, any notes or other evidence of indebtedness to the company, given on account of past premium payments on said policies, issued to the insured, which indebtedness shall be then canceled, the balance shall be taken as a net single premium for temporary insurance for the full amount written in the policy. ”

“ There will thus be a "saving from loadings."
Every company, as has been said, shows these savings every year, though in varying degrees. Every company, that is, charges the policy-holder more than the actual insurance costs. ”

“ I commend to the policy-holders of the Prudential and other insurance corporations, and to other honest men, these tremendous figures: every $1,000 invested turned into $22,000, not in a gold or diamond mine, but in a life-insurance company where every dollar comes from the policy-holder who is supposed to pay in only enough to insure a promised payment plus provision for honest expense. ”

“ The cost of pure insurance is about one third of the premium, or perhaps a little less. Now, does any unprejudiced person believe that it is necessary to charge three dollars for the purpose of disbursing to the families of the insured one dollar? Is not any system of insurance properly open to criticism that continues to assume and charge a cost that experience has shown to be so excessively beyond the necessities of the case? ”

“ Respondent has not established an asset for future benefit. It has merely paid the premiums necessary to obtain insurance. It is true that premiums paid in 1963 may result in a reduction in premiums in later years. ”

“ The statute fixes the premium which for life insurance must be based upon the American experience table of mortality, with additions for extra hazards, and with interest at three per cent, and with an addition for expenses and contingencies amounting to two dollars per year per thousand dollars of insurance and one-sixth of the value of the insurance distributed equally through the premium payments. ”

“ If fires destroy a million of dollars’ worth in property insured for its full value, and a million’s worth more in property insured for one-tenth of its value, the insurers will pay $1,000,000 upon the first group and more than $750,000 upon the second. But if all the insurance is taken at the same rate the insurers will have received premiums ten times as great on the former group as upon the latter. ”

“ Now, since the uniform annual premiums are just sufficient to provide for the ultimate payment of the sums insured, it is obvious that the deficiencies of later years must be made up by the excess of the earlier payments; and, in order that the insurance office may be in a position to meet its engagements, these surplus payments must be kept in hand and accumulated at interest until they are required for the purpose indicated. ”

“ In determining the liabilities upon its contracts of insurance of any insurance company other than life insurance, and the amount such company should hold as a reserve for reinsurance, he shall, for casualty insurance companies, charge one half of the premium on all annual policies written within one year, and on policies written for more than one year he shall charge one half of the current year's premiums, plus the whole of the premiums for subsequent years. ”

“ In the event of the death of the insured during the days of grace, the current premium being unpaid, if no other option has been elected, or if the policy shall lapse, the dividend then due shall be paid in cash. ”

“ Our compensation is the great one that, when we die, our dependents will not be beggared. This is so great an advantage, it adds so wonderfully to the sum of human happiness, that we are willing to pay for it all that it costs. No one regards the insurance upon his house—one's fire insurance—as an investment—as something upon which he receives an annual income ”

“ Perhaps no modern commercial enterprise directly affects so many persons in all walks of life as does the insurance business. Insurance touches the home, the family, and the occupation or the business of almost every person in the United States. ”

“ And if any person or persons shall insure his or their buildings or goods, and shall cause the same to be described in the policy otherwise than as they really are, so as the same be charged as a lower premium than would otherwise be demanded, such insurance shall be of no force. ”

“ The actual cheapness of insurance depends not so much upon the amounts paid from time to time as upon the actual quality of the insurance purchased. Assessment companies of all kinds, without a legal lien upon definite property, are decidedly lacking in quality, since their guaranty of payment involves the financial credit of every person insured. ”