[S026]

self-insurance

The retention of sufficient exposure units by an entity to permit the operation of the law of large numbers. Self insurance is a term often mistakenly used to describe the situation when an entity decides to retain its own risks. The mistake arises when the exposure units are too few in number to permit the application of the law of large numbers. When the exposure units are too few, a better and less misleading term of such a practice is "self-assumption of risk."