Teaching Kids About Insurance
Insurance is a large and diverse field, with a number of complexities and nuances. Anyone who has ever studied the insurance (insurance64.co.uk) industry knows just how hard it can be to understand and define, especially if you are a child or adolescent. However, while the insurance industry may be complex, it follows a few basic principles and can be successfully taught to young students. By breaking the concept of insurance down to a few basic building blocks, it can be surprisingly transparent and simple to comprehend.
Insurance is based on the notion of risk management, or a collective pooling of risk to hedge against the potential of loss. In essence, it is nothing more than a method of controlling risk, by transferring it to an insurance company instead of taking it on yourself. When you break down the concept of insurance into these basic building blocks, it becomes much easier for a young audience to understand. One other powerful way to teach insurance to young students is through the history of insurance, by taking them back to a time when the principles of insurance were less complicated.
Insurance is practically as old as human civilisation itself. For example, if a house in a village burnt down, other people in the village got together to help build a new one so that their neighbours would do the same for them in a similar situation. This is a basic form of insurance, as one party has in essence managed their risk through the collective management of their peers. Modern contents insurance (Hausratversicherung) began in the 3rd and 2nd millenia in the cultures of China and Babylonia respectively, where merchants redistributed their goods across multiple sailing veseles to reduce the associated risk if one vessel happened to sink.
Using simple stories like these, it is possible to teach children and young students the very basis of what insurance is. Once young students understand the basic concepts of insurance, it is then possible to teach them about the complexities of the insurance industry. While life insurance, health insurance, and property insurance may seem very different to untrained eyes, they all follow basically the same model of risk management and contingency. With the right stories and a simple way to break down the insurance industry into simple methodologies, it is very possible to teach kids about insurance in a way that they will remember throughout their lives.