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Zenith Insurance - Common Forms Of Insurance Businesses

Following up from the previous post

- Intact Insurance - The Structure Of The Business Of Insurance 

The next most common form of insurance company organization is the mutual insurance company. Stated generally, a mutual insurer is an insurer corporation without capital stock that is owned by its policyholders collectively, who have the right to vote in the election of its board of directors. The principles governing the duties, powers, and obligations of the board of directors of a mutual insurer are generally the same as those applicable to other private corporations.

Many insurers that retain the word mutual in their names have long-since converted to the capital stock form of doing business. They retain the term mutual in their corporate names not only because of the company's history, but also because the use of the term mutual has a feel-good quality that helps support the image of security that insurers like to promote.




The third most common form of insurance company organization is what is called a reciprocal insurer, also called interinsurance exchange. In effect, all policyholders of a reciprocal insurer, who are also called subscribers, insure each other. In order to become an insured of a reciprocal insurer, each person or company executes a subscription agreement as part of the application for the policy. 

In the subscription agreement, that person or entity appoints an attorney-in-fact, who, pursuant to the terms of the subscription agreement, manages the affairs of the reciprocal insurer. The attorney-in-fact is often a separately constituted corporation. Through the corporation's employees or through contractual relationships with other entities, the attorney-in-fact arranges for underwriting, actuarial, claims, and other services, and enters into reinsurance contracts.

For example, the insurance offered by the American Automobile Association or its affiliated organizations in different states, such as the Automobile Club of Southern California, is offered through entities that are organized as reciprocal insurers. United Services Automobile Association is another well-known example. Reciprocal insurers are often organized and will insure only those persons who share some qualifying membership criteria, such as a club membership or service in the armed forces.


All three types of insurance companies are regulated in substantially similar fashion by the insurance departments of the fifty states. Mutual and reciprocal insurers give their policyholders the right to appear and vote at the annual meetings of insurers, just as stockholders of a corporation have the right to attend annual meetings and to vote to elect directors and pass resolutions on the agenda. This is a right that relatively few policyholders take advantage of.


Both mutual and reciprocal forms of insurance company organizations are, in a certain sense, vestiges of a past world in which a relatively small group of localized individuals came together to create a means of providing insurance to an unserved or underserved group of people or businesses. The voting rights aspect of these insurance company organizational forms reflects the different practicalities confronting those persons that, as a small group of affected policyholders, the acts of the board of directors of the company affects directly.


As a practical matter, the differences between capital stock, mutual, and reciprocal insurance organizations affect the average consumer very little, except in the manner in which insurance is sold.

The following comments are somewhat more true of reciprocal insurers than they are of mutual insurers, but nonetheless may apply. The policies offered by reciprocal and mutual insurers are often less expensive than those offered by stock insurers. That factor has been one of the perceived historical advantages that reciprocal and mutual insurers hold over stock insurers. 



In the past, their cost advantages had much to do with the fact that the underwriters and actuaries for such insurers had a good understanding of the risks posed by the limited classes of individuals to which policies would be issued and the limited geographical scope of the insurers' operations.

However, the less expensive nature of the policy sold by reciprocal and mutual insurers can be very deceptive in the modem-day world. Reciprocal and mutual insurers developed at a time when the world was much simpler. When everyone was selling nothing more than a standard tlre policy, with the terms and conditions of the policy mandated by state law, all insurers were, in fact, selling the same promises. At that time there was a basis for a localized reciprocal or mutual insurer to offer savings to policyholders that mattered.


As society and insurance markets matured, that was no longer the case, Today, homeowners policies offer coverages that go beyond those of standard fire policies. The insurance purchaser needs to compare coverages offered and included (or not included) to determine whether the lower premiums often offered on policies of reciprocal and mutual insurers can be justified by the sometimes lesser coverages offered compared with those of other companies, including stock companies.