The insured refers to the person or entity in which an insurance policy insures.
While most people might instinctively assume that the insured would be the person buying insurance and making claims against it, this is not always the case.
The insured party, or name insured, can often be someone who does not receive who would not receive any financial benefits from a policy.
For example, life insurance can often be purchased by the children of a parent to insure the life of the father or mother. In this case, the parent would be the insured, the children might be policy holder. This can even be more complicated when the beneficiary is not one of the children who purchased the policy.
The party that receives the benefits can also be called the assured.
General insurance
For most insurance policies, the purchaser of the policy would be the policy holder, and he or she would insure himself or herself, listing ownself as the claimant.
The policy holder would be the insured.
This is mostly true of medical insurance, liability insurance, car insurance, etc.
When medical expenses are incurred for example, the insured would submit claims to the insurer to receive payout of benefits to obtain reimbursements for medical bills.
Other times, parents might purchase insurance for their kids who are not old enough to buy their own coverage.
In this case, the insured would be the kids.
When companies purchase product liability insurance for example, the insured can be the business owner, the company, or the staff.
How the policy would be underwritten really depends on the needs of the business.
The takeaway from all these information is that the insured is the party in which an insurance policy insures, and does not necessarily refer to the assured, the beneficiary, or the policy holder.
There are hundreds, if not thousands, of types of insurance policies out there in the market that cater to all types of assurance needs for all types of people and entities.
And they all cannot be expected to be structured the same way.
