The most complicated aspect of the insurance business is the of policies. Using a wide assortment of data, insurers predict the likelihood that a claim will be made against their policies and price products accordingly. To this end, insurers use to quantify the risks they are willing to assume and the premium they will to assume them. Data is analyzed to fairly accurately project the rate of future claims based on a given risk. Actuarial science uses and to analyze the risks associated with the range of perils covered, and these scientific principles are used to determine an insurer's overall exposure. Upon termination of a given policy, the amount of premium collected and the investment gains thereon minus the amount paid out in claims is the insurer's on that policy. Of course, from the insurer's perspective, some policies are "winners" (i.e., the insurer pays out less in claims and expenses than it receives in premiums and investment income) and some are "losers" (i.e., the insurer pays out more in claims and expenses than it receives in premiums and investment income); insurance companies essentially use actuarial science to attempt to underwrite enough "winning" policies to pay out on the "losers" while still maintaining profitability.
An insurer's underwriting performance is measured in its combined ratio. The loss ratio (incurred losses and loss-adjustment expenses divided by net earned premium) is added to the expense ratio (underwriting expenses divided by net premium written) to determine the company's combined ratio. The combined ratio is a reflection of the company's overall profitability. A combined ratio of less than 100 percent indicates underwriting profitability, while anything over 100 indicates an underwriting loss.
Insurance companies also earn profits on “float”. “Float” or available reserve is the amount of money, at hand at any given moment, that an insurer has collected in insurance premiums but has not been paid out in claims. Insurers start investing insurance premiums as soon as they are collected and continue to earn interest on them until claims are paid out. The Association of British Insurers (gathering 400 insurance companies and 94% of UK insurance services) has almost 20% of the investments in the In the the underwriting loss of and companies was $142.3 billion in the five years ending 2003. But overall profit for the same period was $68.4 billion, as the result of float. Some insurance industry insiders, most notably do not believe that it is forever possible to sustain a profit from float without an underwriting profit as well, but this opinion is not universally held. Naturally, the “float” method is difficult to carry out in an economically depressed period. Bear markets do cause insurers to shift away from investments and to toughen up their underwriting standards. So a poor economy generally means high insurance premiums. This tendency to swing between profitable and unprofitable periods over time is commonly known as the "underwriting" orProperty and casualty insurers currently make the most money from their auto insurance line of business. Generally better statistics are available on auto losses and underwriting on this line of business has benefited greatly from advances in computing. Additionally, property losses in the due to unpredictable natural catastrophes, have exacerbated this trend.
[Claims
Claims and loss handling is the materialized utility of insurance; it is the actual "product" paid for, though one hopes it will never need to be used. Claims may be filed by insureds directly with the insurer or through brokers or agents. The insurer may require that the claim be filed on its own proprietary forms, or may accept claims on a standard industry form such as those produced by .
Insurance company claim departments employ a large number of supported by a staff ofand Incoming claims are classified based on severity and are assigned to adjusters whose settlement authority varies with their knowledge and experience. The adjuster undertakes a thorough investigation of each claim, usually in close cooperation with the insured, determines its reasonable monetary value, and authorizes payment. Adjusting liability insurance claims is particularly difficult because there is a third party involved (the plaintiff who is suing the insured) who is under no contractual obligation to cooperate with the insurer and in fact may regard the insurer as a The adjuster must obtain legal counsel for the insured (either inside "house" counsel or outside "panel" counsel), monitor litigation that may take years to complete, and appear in person or over the telephone with settlement authority at a mandatory settlement conference when requested by the judge.
In managing the claims handling function, insurers seek to balance the elements of customer satisfaction, administrative handling expenses, and claims overpayment leakages. As part of this balancing act, are a major business risk that must be managed and overcome. Disputes between insurers and insureds over the validity of claims or claims handling practices occasionally escalate into litigation; see [History of insurance
Main article: In some sense we can say that insurance appears simultaneously with the appearance of human society. We know of two types of economies in human societies: money economies (with markets, money, financial instruments and so on) and non-money or natural economies (without money, markets, financial instruments and so on). The second type is a more ancient form than the first. In such an economy and community, we can see insurance in the form of people helping each other. For example, if a house burns down, the members of the community help build a new one. Should the same thing happen to one's neighbour, the other neighbours must help. Otherwise, neighbours will not receive help in the future. This type of insurance has survived to the present day in some countries where modern money economy with its financial instruments is not widespread.
Turning to insurance in the modern sense (i.e., insurance in a modern money economy, in which insurance is part of the financial sphere), early methods of transferring or distributing risk were practised by and traders as long ago as th and BC, respectively Chinese merchants travelling treacherous river rapids would redistribute their wares across many vessels to limit the loss due to any single vessel's capsizing. The Babylonians developed a system which was recorded in the famous c. 1750 BC, and practised by early sailing If a merchant received a loan to fund his shipment, he would pay the lender an additional sum in exchange for the lender's guarantee to cancel the loan should the shipment be stolen or lost at sea.
monarchs of Ancient Persia were the first to insure their people and made it official by registering the insuring process in governmental notary offices. The insurance tradition was performed each year in Norouz (beginning of the Iranian New Year); the heads of different ethnic groups as well as others willing to take part, presented gifts to the monarch. The most important gift was presented during a special ceremony. When a gift was worth more than 10,000 Derrik (Achaemenian gold coin) the issue was registered in a special office. This was advantageous to those who presented such special gifts. For others, the presents were fairly assessed by the confidants of the court. Then the assessment was registered in special offices.
The purpose of registering was that whenever the person who presented the gift registered by the court was in trouble, the monarch and the court would help him. Jahez, a historian and writer, writes in one of his books on : "[W]henever the owner of the present is in trouble or wants to construct a building, set up a feast, have his children married, etc. the one in charge of this in the court would check the registration. If the registered amount exceeded 10,000 Derrik, he or she would receive an amount of twice as muchthe concept of the would be used to reimburse any merchant whose goods were jettisoned during storm or sinkage.
The and introduced the origins of health and life insurance c. 600 AD when they organized guilds called "benevolent societies" which cared for the purpose. The deals with several aspects of insuring Before insurance was established in the late 17th century, "friendly societies" existed in England, in which people donated amounts of money to a general sum that could be used for emergencies.
Separate insurance contracts (i.e., insurance policies not bundled with loans or other kinds of contracts) were invented in in the 14th century, as were insurance pools backed by pledges of landed estates. These new insurance contracts allowed insurance to be separated from investment, a separation of roles that first proved useful in marine insurance. Insurance became far more sophisticated in post- and specialized varieties developed.
Some forms of insurance had developed in London by the early decades of the seventeenth century. For example, the will of the English colonist mentions two "policies of insurance" taken out with the diocesan Chancellor of London, Arthur Duck. Of the value of £100 each, one relates to the safe arrival of Hayman's ship in Guyana and the other is in regard to "one hundred pounds assured by the said Doctor Arthur Ducke on my life". Hayman's will was signed and sealed on 17 November 1628 but not proved until 1633Toward the end of the seventeenth century, London's growing importance as a centre for trade increased demand for marine insurance. In the late 1680s, opened a coffee house that became a popular haunt of ship owners, merchants, and ships’ captains, and thereby a reliable source of the latest shipping news. It became the meeting place for parties wishing to insure cargoes and ships, and those willing to underwrite such ventures. Today, remains the leading market (note that it is not an insurance company) for marine and other specialist types of insurance, but it works rather differently than the more familiar kinds of insurance.
Insurance as we know it today can be traced to the , which in 1666 devoured more than 13,000 houses. The devastating effects of the fire converted the development of insurance "from a matter of convenience into one of urgency, a change of opinion reflected in Sir Christopher Wren's inclusion of a site for 'the Insurance Office' in his new plan for London in 1667."A number of attempted fire insurance schemes came to nothing, but in 1681 and eleven associates, established England's first fire insurance company, the 'Insurance Office for Houses', at the back of the Royal Exchange. Initially, 5,000 homes were insured by Barbon's Insurance Office
The first insurance company in the underwrote fire insurance and was formed in Charles Town (modern-day in 1732. helped to popularize and make standard the practice of insurance, particularly against in the form of In 1752, he founded the . Franklin's company was the first to make contributions toward fire prevention. Not only did his company warn against certain , it refused to insure certain buildings where the risk of fire was too great, such as all wooden houses. In the United States, of the insurance industry is highly, with primary responsibility assumed by individual insurance departments. Whereas insurance markets have become centralized nationally and internationally, state insurance commissioners operate individually, though at times in concert through a . In recent years, some have called for a dual state and federal regulatory system (commonly referred to as the (OFC)) for insurance similar to that which oversees state banks and national banks.

Financial institutions provide service as intermediaries of the capital and debt markets. They are responsible for transferring funds from investors to companies, in need of those funds. The presence of financial institutions facilitate the flow of money through the economy. To do so, savings are pooled to mitigate the risk brought to provide funds for loans. Such is the primary means for depository institutions to develop revenue. Should the become inverse, firms in this arena will offer additional fee-generating services including securities underwriting, and prime brokerage.
Corporate valuation
Relative metrics : Price/Equity Price/Book Value
Use Equity Multiples (as opposed to Enterprise Multiples). To consider how valuing a Financial Institution's balance sheet is different from a non-Financial firm, consider how an industrial firm wields capital machinery (asset) and the loans (liabilities) it used to finance that asset. The line is blurred in Financial Institutions, which must hold deposit accounts (liabilities) to fuel the issuance of loans (assets). The same accounts are considered loans as they are held in ownership not of the bank, but of the individual client.
Dividend Discount Model : Earnings-per-share
Dividends-per-share
Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) Model : You'll need the FCFE (Free Cash Flow for Equity), which is the amount of money that is returned to shareholders. Calculate an FCFF (Free Cash Flow to the Firm): EBIT (1-tax rate) -Capital Expenditures+ (Depreciation & Amortization) - (Net increase in working capital)= FCFF
FCFF-Debt+Cash=FCFE
Use the Capital Asset Pricing Model, not the Weighted Average Cost of Capital (for the same reasons one uses Equity Multiples in relative valuation) to determine the cost of equity (the return required by shareholders to make the decision to invest in a financial institutions)
Excess Return Model : A model where valuation is expressed as the sum of capital invested currently in the firm and the present value of dollar excess returns that the firm expects to make in the future

In most English common law jurisdictions there is a Bills of Exchange Act that codifies the law in relation to including and this Act contains a statutory definition of the term banker: banker includes a body of persons, whether incorporated or not, who carry on the business of banking' (Section 2, Interpretation). Although this definition seems circular, it is actually functional, because it ensures that the legal basis for bank transactions such as do not depend on how the bank is organised or regulated.
The business of banking is in many countries not defined by statute but by common law, the definition above. In other English common law jurisdictions there are statutory definitions of the business of banking or banking business. When looking at these definitions it is important to keep in mind that they are defining the business of banking for the purposes of the legislation, and not necessarily in general. In particular, most of the definitions are from legislation that has the purposes of entry regulating and supervising banks rather than regulating the actual business of banking. However, in many cases the statutory definition closely mirrors the common law one. Examples of statutory definitions:
"banking business" means the business of receiving money on current or deposit account, paying and collecting cheques drawn by or paid in by customers, the making of advances to customers, and includes such other business as the Authority may prescribe for the purposes of this Act; (Banking Act (Singapore), Section 2, Interpretation).
"banking business" means the business of either or both of the following:
receiving from the general public money on current, deposit, savings or other similar account repayable on demand or within less than [3 months] ... or with a period of call or notice of less than that period;
paying or collecting cheques drawn by or paid in by customersSince the advent ofElectronic Funds Transfer at Point Of Sale), direct credit, direct debit and internet banking, the cheque has lost its primacy in most banking systems as a payment instrument. This has led legal theorists to suggest that the cheque based definition should be broadened to include financial institutions that conduct current accounts for customers and enable customers to pay and be paid by third parties, even if they do not pay and collect cheques