Genesis of Scientific Views on Insurance as an Economic Category

In the conditions of active development of the insurance market at the present stage, the importance and significance of understanding the essence of the category “insurance” as a fundamental theoretical basis for the functioning of insurance relations in general is increasing. In addition to comprehending the essence of the category “insurance”, the task of economic science is to substantiate the essential interrelationships of various same-plane categories. For the category “insurance”, in the author’s opinion, such categories are “finance”, “credit”, “investments”. Insurance as an independent economic category is objective and has its own internal laws, the study of which from the standpoint of the retrospective method will provide a deeper understanding of the essence of insurance, its prerequisites, causes and laws of development. As the analysis has shown, despite the generally recognized and solid period of its genesis, insurance still does not have an unambiguous definition of its essence and an independence of functioning as an economic category. The understanding of the essence of insurance, with a due account for modern trends in the development of economic science, predetermines the search for essential features characteristic of insurance, finance, credit, and investments. In the author’s opinion, these features are: the general purpose of functioning, management features, the nature of economic relations in reproduction and the purpose of redistribution. The protective purpose of insurance is a classic distinguishing feature of the category, since insurance was originally formed as a system for protecting property interests in the event of adverse consequences. In the article, based on the study of existing scientific approaches to the issue, the author has investigated the relationship between the categories: within them, while maintaining independence, institutions and their services come in contact and interpenetrate, which makes it possible to identify and substantiate the specifics of creating aggregated and converged financial products. The author has defined and substantiated the protective and regulatory nature of the category “insurance”, which took on various forms throughout evolution, but nevertheless has always been present and manifested in insurance organizations’ activities. The author has also clarified the concept “insurance”, which, in contrast to the existing approaches, emphasizes insurance coverage as an essential feature, taking into account the changing role of insurance institutions in relations with consumers.

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