Do we have fear? Or do we have faith?

This past Wednesday, I was confronted with a choice. This choice had been building for several years, ever since I had a consultation with an ortho-facial surgeon to have my wisdom teeth removed. In this consultation, I disclosed that I have a heart disorder called Mitral Valve Prolapse. It affects nearly 5% of all women to varying degrees, and mine is a textbook example. I’ve had many doctors hear about me and simply want to listen to my heart to see what it sounds like. Normally, with taking care of myself, I forget that I even have MVP until I do something stupid to cause it to act up. I told the doctor all of this, where he examined my x-rays, did some more surveys and then sat down with me to go over the risks of the surgery. He told me that because of where one of my teeth was located, it was possible that he could put a hole in my sinuses that could become infected. MVP patients are very susceptible to the kind of bacteria that lives in the human mouth and if these bacteria were introduced at a high dose into the blood stream, it could infect my heart valve and cause it to stop beating. He looked me straight in the eye and told me there was a very real chance I wouldn’t survive. Needless to say, I decided I liked breathing and my wisdom tooth was fine where it was. I left the office without any plans to ever return. Fast forward to 2005. I was having a routine x-ray at my chiropractor’s office and he noticed that my wisdom teeth had turned sideways and were very clearly impacting the rest of my teeth. He told me that I should have it checked out and asked if it hurt. I told him that it did, but I was more willing to put up with the pain rather than end up dead. Instead of taking that as an answer, he gave my x-rays to another patient of his who is a dentist. I scheduled an appointment with the dentist who then referred me to another ortho-facial surgeon. This surgeon when I met him was incredibly sure of himself, incredibly flamboyant, and exactly not what you would expect a doctor to be like. I had heard from everyone I talked to that he was the best in the field and preformed thousands of extractions a year. I met with him and he assured me that he did hundreds of surgeries each year on people with MVP and that because of my age and my general good health that he didn’t plan on any trouble at all. He also told me that he had never lost a patient out of thousands upon thousands and only had two or three with real issues after the surgery. He told me he wasn’t about to ruin that record. I scheduled the surgery and walked out of the office feeling confident that everything would be fine. As the weeks until the surgery went by, I found that more and more I lost that feeling of confidence and I regained the fear I had lived with in the years leading up to the appointment. Looking back on it now, I am much the same with God. I lose my confidence in Him and go back to fearing whatever is on my mind. By the time Wednesday, November 16th rolled around, I was good and scared. Monday, open enrollment for my insurance was ending and I upped my life insurance and my short and long-term disability. Wednesday, I found myself sitting in the waiting room, trying not to chicken out and run. They came out for me and escorted me to a room with a big chair that they got me comfortable in. As soon as I was in the chair and positioned correctly, the nurse strapped a face mask on me and told me to breathe deeply, that it was a mixture of Nitrous and Oxygen and I’d be fine and feel floaty, then go to sleep. I found that in that moment there was no going back and I was now facing a decision. Was I going to go to sleep in faith or in fear? How many times do we need to ask ourselves that? How many times do we give in to fear and not even consider that we are failing at faith. A very wise person once told me that the very opposite of faith was fear, and fear is such an easy choice. Do we have a fear of commitment or do we have faith that we can follow through? Do we have a fear of failure or faith that we can succeed? Do we have a fear of not being accepted or faith that people love us? Do we have fear? Or do we have faith? I believe how we make that decision every day affects every part of our lives. It’s not just faith in God: it’s faith in ourselves, it’s faith in those around us, and it’s faith in everything we do. I believe this struggle is universal, and if you wish to use it in a story, please let me know! I believe one of the most realistic parts of characterization is looking into the character’s soul and spirit and seeing what makes them act the way they do in the story. This would be a great thing to think about if you are writing a story – what is your character afraid of? What do they have faith in? How does that affect the life you are building around them? If you do take this challenge, please send me a link!

Client Testimonials

Client Testimonials

“We’ve been working with them since the 1990s and it’s been a great relationship. I consider them not only a trusted advisor but also a friend. They understands my organization thoroughly, knows how we operate, and usually calls us before we have to call them.”
Brian M, Houston

“They always calls back promptly and corresponds the way I need them to (email, voicemail, etc.). We started when we just needed renters insurance and now he covers us for everything – home, office, business, umbrellas, auto…you name it. I appreciate doing business with someone I can trust, who is responsive, and who is always looking out for how to best serve me…AND who makes it convenient!”
Terri H, Conroe

“They handle not only my personal insurance but also the insurance for my brewery/restaurant and my commercial rental properties. They are very knowledgeable and experienced in these areas. I can always count on them to keep me informed and to resolve problems quickly. They are professional and have integrity – qualities that everyone in the office shares.”
Teresa S, Houston

“One of their most important attributes is its extremely efficient customer service. We’re a relatively new client and they took a very personal approach to helping us identify the right insurance for our needs. I know that if we ever have a problem, they will get things taken care of. They are excellent sales peaple who offers competitive rates and has the customer’s best interests in mind.”
Mike C, The Woodlands

“They have provided exemplary service over the years. Whenever I’ve had a claim, they have been very quick to get things resolved. They’re all terrific people.”
Gerry B, Spring

“They are a small business that still believes in relationships. For the past ten years I’ve worked with them and they have helped with my personal and commercial needs. They are always willing to go the distance and I refer his services to everyone that I know.”
Kevin S, Pasadena

“I know from experience that when I call I will get excellent service and great rates. They take care of anything that I need, from silly to serious. They never treat you like a number, never put you on hold. I feel very confident in knowing that they are personal friends to me and my family.”
Lynn C, Humble

“I have been very impressed by the personal service provided by the office. In this day-and-age, where customer service is sometimes forgotten, they make the effort to explain a life insurance policy. At the time, I had a small child at home and was grateful for the convenience. In the years since, every time we’ve had a problem they been there to resolve it. I appreciate working with a company that is genuine.”
Christy P, Kingwood

“I consider Texas Century Insurance to be my advocate. I have no hesitation calling them whenever I have an issue to be taken care of. The entire office is very helpful, and it has a friendly, neighborhood feel that makes me comfortable. All of my kids are insured on their own through them, and I’d recommend them to anybody.”
Rhonda H, Houston

“When it comes to insurance, for me, it’s all about trust and understanding. I want those serving me to understand what I need and want. And I want to trust that I will always get the best advice and the best service. That’s what I get from Ana. Ana knows me and understands my insurance needs. She’s always been proactive in making sure I get the right coverage at the best price. Just as important, when I’ve had to make a claim, Ana has been there with good advice. When I was previously with a national insurance company with no local agent, I ended up filing a claim I never should have filed because I didn’t have a local advocate to explain all the implications. They really works for their clients, and that’s why I like doing business with them.”
Richard B, Spring

“Working with Texas Century Insurance has been a real pleasure. I've been with them for nearly 10 years and I've always received prompt, knowledgeable service. The few times I called for a claim, they helped me get my claim settled quickly and without hassle. I have recommended them to my friends and to my aging parents and would not hesitate to recommend them again.”
Archie G, Tomball

“We are very pleased to have them handle all our insurance needs because they take a personal interest in making sure we have exactly the coverage we need at the best price. They first took care of our auto insurance; the service was excellent and we saved a significant amount of money. So, when we bought our house, there was never a question of who we would call for home owners' insurance.”
Jim W, Katy

An endowment policy

An endowment policy is a life insurance contract designed to pay a lump sum after a specified term (on its 'maturity') or on earlier death. Typical maturities are ten, fifteen or twenty years up to a certain age limit. Some policies also pay out in the case of critical illness.

Policies are typically traditional with-profits or unit-linked (including those with unitised with-profits funds).

Endowments can be cashed in early (or 'surrendered') and the holder then receives the surrender value which is determined by the insurance company depending on how long the policy has been running and how much has been paid in to it. During adverse investment conditions, the encashment value or surrender value may be reduced by a 'Market Value Adjuster' to allow for the need to cash in units at a time when investment conditions are not ideal. This means that the investor would receive the surrender value less the market value adjuster.

Insurance vs. assurance

Outside the United States, the specific uses of the terms "insurance" and "assurance" are sometimes confused. In general, in these jurisdictions "insurance" refers to providing cover for an event that might happen, while "assurance" is the provision of cover for an event that is certain to happen. However, in the United States both forms of coverage are called "insurance".

When a person insures the contents of their home they do so because of events that might happen (fire, theft, flood, etc.) They hope their home will never be burglarized, or burn down, but they want to ensure that they are financially protected if the worst happens. This example of insurance shows how it is a way of spending a little money to protect against the risk of having to spend a lot of money.

When a person insures their life they do so knowing that one day they will die. Therefore a policy that covers death is assured to make a payment. The policy offers assurance on death; even if the policy has a prescribed termination date the policy is still assured to pay on death and therefore is an assurance policy. Examples include Term Assurance and Whole Life Assurance. An accidental death policy is not assured to pay on death as the life insured may not die through an accident, therefore it is an insurance policy.

A policy might also be assured for other reasons. For example an endowment policy is designed to provide a lump sum on maturity. Under certain types of policy the lump sum is guaranteed. Therefore, this may also be called an assurance policy.

The test of whether a policy is assurance or insurance is that with an assurance policy the insured event will definitely occur (at some point) whereas with an insurance policy there is a risk the insured event might occur.

With regard to Whole Life policies, the question is not whether the insured event (in this case death) will occur, but simply when. If the policy has nonforfeiture values (or cash values) then the policy is assured to pay.

During recent years, the distinction between the two terms has become largely blurred. This is principally due to many companies offering both types of policy, and rather than refer to themselves using both insurance and assurance titles, they instead use just one.

Love is a Mommy

This past Wednesday, I was confronted with a choice. This choice had been building for several years, ever since I had a consultation with an ortho-facial surgeon to have my wisdom teeth removed.

In this consultation, I disclosed that I have a heart disorder called Mitral Valve Prolapse. It affects nearly 5% of all women to varying degrees, and mine is a textbook example. I’ve had many doctors hear about me and simply want to listen to my heart to see what it sounds like. Normally, with taking care of myself, I forget that I even have MVP until I do something stupid to cause it to act up. I told the doctor all of this, where he examined my x-rays, did some more surveys and then sat down with me to go over the risks of the surgery.

He told me that because of where one of my teeth was located, it was possible that he could put a hole in my sinuses that could become infected. MVP patients are very susceptible to the kind of bacteria that lives in the human mouth and if these bacteria were introduced at a high dose into the blood stream, it could infect my heart valve and cause it to stop beating. He looked me straight in the eye and told me there was a very real chance I wouldn’t survive.

Needless to say, I decided I liked breathing and my wisdom tooth was fine where it was. I left the office without any plans to ever return. Fast forward to 2005.

I was having a routine x-ray at my chiropractor’s office and he noticed that my wisdom teeth had turned sideways and were very clearly impacting the rest of my teeth. He told me that I should have it checked out and asked if it hurt. I told him that it did, but I was more willing to put up with the pain rather than end up dead. Instead of taking that as an answer, he gave my x-rays to another patient of his who is a dentist.

I scheduled an appointment with the dentist who then referred me to another ortho-facial surgeon. This surgeon when I met him was incredibly sure of himself, incredibly flamboyant, and exactly not what you would expect a doctor to be like. I had heard from everyone I talked to that he was the best in the field and preformed thousands of extractions a year. I met with him and he assured me that he did hundreds of surgeries each year on people with MVP and that because of my age and my general good health that he didn’t plan on any trouble at all. He also told me that he had never lost a patient out of thousands upon thousands and only had two or three with real issues after the surgery. He told me he wasn’t about to ruin that record. I scheduled the surgery and walked out of the office feeling confident that everything would be fine.

As the weeks until the surgery went by, I found that more and more I lost that feeling of confidence and I regained the fear I had lived with in the years leading up to the appointment. Looking back on it now, I am much the same with God. I lose my confidence in Him and go back to fearing whatever is on my mind. By the time Wednesday, November 16th rolled around, I was good and scared.

Monday, open enrollment for my insurance was ending and I upped my life insurance and my short and long-term disability. Wednesday, I found myself sitting in the waiting room, trying not to chicken out and run. They came out for me and escorted me to a room with a big chair that they got me comfortable in. As soon as I was in the chair and positioned correctly, the nurse strapped a face mask on me and told me to breathe deeply, that it was a mixture of Nitrous and Oxygen and I’d be fine and feel floaty, then go to sleep.

I found that in that moment there was no going back and I was now facing a decision.

Was I going to go to sleep in faith or in fear?

How many times do we need to ask ourselves that? How many times do we give in to fear and not even consider that we are failing at faith. A very wise person once told me that the very opposite of faith was fear, and fear is such an easy choice.

Do we have a fear of commitment or do we have faith that we can follow through?

Do we have a fear of failure or faith that we can succeed?

Do we have a fear of not being accepted or faith that people love us?

Do we have fear? Or do we have faith?

I believe how we make that decision every day affects every part of our lives. It’s not just faith in God: it’s faith in ourselves, it’s faith in those around us, and it’s faith in everything we do.


I believe this struggle is universal, and if you wish to use it in a story, please let me know! I believe one of the most realistic parts of characterization is looking into the character’s soul and spirit and seeing what makes them act the way they do in the story. This would be a great thing to think about if you are writing a story – what is your character afraid of? What do they have faith in? How does that affect the life you are building around them? If you do take this challenge, please send me a link!

Risk management

Risk management is a structured approach to managing uncertainty related to a threat, a sequence of human activities including: risk assessment, strategies development to manage it, and mitigation of risk using managerial resources.

The strategies include transferring the risk to another party, avoiding the risk, reducing the negative effect of the risk, and accepting some or all of the consequences of a particular risk.

Some traditional risk managements are focused on risks stemming from physical or legal causes (e.g. natural disasters or fires, accidents, death and lawsuits). Financial risk management, on the other hand, focuses on risks that can be managed using traded financial instruments.

The objective of risk management is to reduce different risks related to a preselected domain to the level accepted by society. It may refer to numerous types of threats caused by environment, technology, humans, organizations and politics. On the other hand it involves all means available for humans, or in particular, for a risk management entity (person, staff, organization).

Principles of insurance

Principles of insurance

Financial market participants

Investors Hedge funds Private equity Venture capital

Speculation

Institutional investors Banks Building societies Trusts Collective investment schemes Credit Unions Insurance companies Investment banks Pension funds Prime Brokers Trusts

Finance series Financial market Participants Corporate finance Personal finance Public finance Banks and Banking Financial regulation

v • d • e

Commercially insurable risks typically share seven common characteristics.^[1]

1. A large number of homogeneous exposure units. The vast majority of insurance policies are provided for individual members of very large classes. Automobile insurance, for example, covered about 175 million automobiles in the United States in 2004.^[2] The existence of a large number of homogeneous exposure units allows insurers to benefit from the so-called “law of large numbers,” which in effect states that as the number of exposure units increases, the actual results are increasingly likely to become close to expected results. There are exceptions to this criterion. Lloyd's of London is famous for insuring the life or health of actors, actresses and sports figures. Satellite Launch insurance covers events that are infrequent. Large commercial property policies may insure exceptional properties for which there are no ‘homogeneous’ exposure units. Despite failing on this criterion, many exposures like these are generally considered to be insurable.
2. Definite Loss. The event that gives rise to the loss that is subject to insurance should, at least in principle, take place at a known time, in a known place, and from a known cause. The classic example is death of an insured on a life insurance policy. Fire, automobile accidents, and worker injuries may all easily meet this criterion. Other types of losses may only be definite in theory. Occupational disease, for instance, may involve prolonged exposure to injurious conditions where no specific time, place or cause is identifiable. Ideally, the time, place and cause of a loss should be clear enough that a reasonable person, with sufficient information, could objectively verify all three elements.
3. Accidental Loss. The event that constitutes the trigger of a claim should be fortuitous, or at least outside the control of the beneficiary of the insurance. The loss should be ‘pure,’ in the sense that it results from an event for which there is only the opportunity for cost. Events that contain speculative elements, such as ordinary business risks, are generally not considered insurable.
4. Large Loss. The size of the loss must be meaningful from the perspective of the insured. Insurance premiums need to cover both the expected cost of losses, plus the cost of issuing and administering the policy, adjusting losses, and supplying the capital needed to reasonably assure that the insurer will be able to pay claims. For small losses these latter costs may be several times the size of the expected cost of losses. There is little point in paying such costs unless the protection offered has real value to a buyer.
5. Affordable Premium. If the likelihood of an insured event is so high, or the cost of the event so large, that the resulting premium is large relative to the amount of protection offered, it is not likely that anyone will buy insurance, even if on offer. Further, as the accounting profession formally recognizes in financial accounting standards, the premium cannot be so large that there is not a reasonable chance of a significant loss to the insurer. If there is no such chance of loss, the transaction may have the form of insurance, but not the substance. (See the U.S. Financial Accounting Standards Board standard number 113)
6. Calculable Loss. There are two elements that must be at least estimable, if not formally calculable: the probability of loss, and the attendant cost. Probability of loss is generally an empirical exercise, while cost has more to do with the ability of a reasonable person in possession of a copy of the insurance policy and a proof of loss associated with a claim presented under that policy to make a reasonably definite and objective evaluation of the amount of the loss recoverable as a result of the claim.
7. Limited risk of catastrophically large losses. The essential risk is often aggregation. If the same event can cause losses to numerous policyholders of the same insurer, the ability of that insurer to issue policies becomes constrained, not by factors surrounding the individual characteristics of a given policyholder, but by the factors surrounding the sum of all policyholders so exposed. Typically, insurers prefer to limit their exposure to a loss from a single event to some small portion of their capital base, on the order of 5 percent. Where the loss can be aggregated, or an individual policy could produce exceptionally large claims, the capital constraint will restrict an insurers appetite for additional policyholders. The classic example is earthquake insurance, where the ability of an underwriter to issue a new policy depends on the number and size of the policies that it has already underwritten. Wind insurance in hurricane zones, particularly along coast lines, is another example of this phenomenon. In extreme cases, the aggregation can affect the entire industry, since the combined capital of insurers and reinsurers can be small compared to the needs of potential policyholders in areas exposed to aggregation risk. In commercial fire insurance it is possible to find single properties whose total exposed value is well in excess of any individual insurer’s capital constraint. Such properties are generally shared among several insurers, or are insured by a single insurer who syndicates the risk into the reinsurance market.

Insurance, in law and economic

Insurance, in law and economics, is a form of risk management primarily used to hedge against the risk of a contingent loss. Insurance is defined as the equitable transfer of the risk of a loss, from one entity to another, in exchange for a premium. An insurer is a company selling the insurance. The insurance rate is a factor used to determine the amount, called the premium, to be charged for a certain amount of insurance coverage. Risk management, the practice of appraising and controlling risk, has evolved as a discrete field of study and practice.