ABSTRACT
An insurance agreement between an insurance company and its insured is a contract. In the United States there are basically two kinds of insurance companies, profit-making and mutual. Two aspects of insurance law are reinsurance and self-insurance. In reinsurance one insurance company “sells” all or part of the risk it is assuming to another insurance company. As the name implies, maritime insurance is devoted to the question of shipping goods by sea. Maritime insurance is generally written on an individual basis. A surety is a person or organization that is willing to put its money behind another person or organization’s performance of a given act. Bonding is similar to suretyship, except it more generally applies to individuals performing certain acts. In many cases an insured, especially major insureds such as manufacturing corporations, can get a better rate on the cost of their insurance by dividing the policy into two parts, referred to as primary and excess insurance.
