Word that means “insurance” that is commonly used in Canada and Great Britain.
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Synonym for Insurance. Used commonly for the life business and in the traditional form of marine policy. Charles Babbage in 1826 suggested that assurance was a contract on the duration of life which must either happen or fail and insurance is a contract relating to any other uncertain event which may partly happen or partly fail but the distinction has never been universally accepted.
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UK: a term commonly used to distinguish insurance business providing benefits related to the duration of human life from other types of insurance (but for practical purposes the terms assurance and insurance are interchangeable).
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UK: Means an insured event that is certain to happen, e.g. in an endowment policy, the life assured will either survive the policy term or die within it. In contrast insurance is taken to mean events, e.g. road accidents that may or may not happen to the individual. The terms have often been used interchangeably although insurance is now the main term.