Let's start by understanding the three main categories of insurance and what distinguishes each of them.

It comes down to the nature of the insured risk.

Property and casualty insurance, that's P&C insurance, and sometimes also referred to as general insurance, covers damage to property or a business. Health insurance covers sickness of the policyholder, and life insurance covers death of the policyholder.

There's also an important difference in timeframe.

A typical P&C or health policy lasts around one year, whereas a life insurance policy typically spans decades.

This difference in duration has major implications for how these companies manage risk and also invest their premiums.

When exploring different types of insurance business, we often need to distinguish the different types of risk, and we refer to these as lines of business.

For example, lines of business in P&C insurance include auto insurance, marine insurance, and commercial insurance.

Lines of business in health insurance cover individual business and group business, with the latter referring to coverage that's provided through an employer or association.

Lines of business in life insurance include life insurance policies and also retirement annuities.

So who are the major players in each of these areas? In P&C insurance, Berkshire Hathaway is one of the largest names. AXA operates across both P&C and health insurance. UnitedHealth Group is a dominant force in health insurance specifically.

Then you have multi-line insurers like AIG and Allianz, which span all three categories, P&C, health, and life.

And in the life insurance space, MetLife and Prudential are among the biggest.

As you can see, some insurers specialize in one area, whilst others operate across the full spectrum.

Note that a life insurance policy pays out on the death of the policyholder, whilst a retirement annuity pays out until the death of the policyholder. So the latter is insuring against the risk of living too long.

Retirement annuities are included in the life insurance bucket, as the death of the policyholder is still a trigger event. It's all a bit morbid.

Now let's look at the overall size of this industry.

The global insurance market is massive.

It's worth trillions of euros. According to a McKinsey report, life insurance is the largest segment at around 2.2 trillion euros, followed by P&C at 1.4 trillion euros, and health insurance at approximately 1.1 trillion.

Geographically, the Americas account for roughly 40% of the global market, with EMEA and Asia-Pacific each representing around 30%.