ABSTRACT
This is a short chapter in which we describe the major participants in the insurance market. This is important for many reasons: first, because products are not entities in a vacuum but are offered by a limited number of participants (as an example, most trade credit policies are sold by a handful of large insurance companies); second, when you design a product and you price it, you need to know the business context you are operating in (e.g. the competition and the organisations you need to deal with) and the clients that are going to buy it, whether they are private individuals, non-insurance companies (possibly through their risk management department), public organisations or other insurance/reinsurance companies.
