Insurance is a means of protection from financial loss. It is a form of risk management, primarily used to hedge against the risk of a contingent or uncertain loss.
Life insurance became popular only when insurance companies stopped emphasizing it as a good investment and sold it instead as a symbolic commitment by fathers to the future well-being of their families.
James Surowiecki in:The New Yorker, Volume 82, Issues 12-19, F-R Publishing Corporation, 2006, p. 28.
