Insurance companies incur major upfront costs when they're selling a policy, and these costs are referred to as acquisition costs. Now, acquisition costs include commissions paid to brokers, so that's amounts paid to those selling the policies on behalf of the insurance company. It also includes underwriter compensation, so that's amounts paid to the underwriters that help the insurance companies to price and assess the risks that they're taking on. And finally, it includes new business processing costs. So that's the administrative costs incurred when you're processing a new policy. Now, if all these costs were simply expensed immediately, it would make any new policy loss making on day one, as all those expenses would be showing in earnings, whilst the profits from the policy are earned gradually over the coverage period. Now, as you might expect, the accounting comes to the rescue. It always likes to try and match revenues and costs. So in this situation, it allows these acquisition costs to be capitalized and then amortized over the coverage period. Now, this is done in exactly the same way as we capitalize and amortize and intangible assets. And for P&C contracts, this is usually done on a straight line basis. Also, any further acquisition costs which are incurred during the policy, let's say there's a broker commission for a policy renewal then that would be added to the capitalized costs and then expensed over the remaining coverage period. The capitalized costs are referred to as deferred acquisition costs, or a DAC asset. For life insurance, the same principle applies in terms of capitalizing and amortizing the DAC asset, but the pattern of amortization will broadly reflect the pattern of premiums received from policy holders, rather than being on a straight line basis. The deck asset can be a surprisingly material asset on the balance sheet, particularly for life insurance companies. And it isn't always presented in the same place, so you sometimes have to hunt around for it. Some companies present it separately on the face of the balance sheet while others include it in intangibles, and there's some that include it within other assets.