We shall be examining the following topics: (i) basic frameworks for accounting and for statutory insurance rules; and (ii) actuarial principles of insurance; for both life and nonlife (i.e. casualty and property) insurance.Section 1 introduces insurance terminology, regarding what an operation must include in order to be an insurance operation (the legal, statistical, financial or economic aspects), and introduces the accounting and regulation frameworks and the two actuarial models of insurance (life vs non-life) developed in the following sections.Sections 2 and 3 deal with legal or statutory rules of “solvency”, and thus with the situation called “insolvency” or, more often, “ruin”, by the actuary profession.Sections 4, 5 and 6 address the same three questions:– Assuming the insurer has perfectly priced the risks he insures, his future result is a random variable; what can be said about it?– How was this pricing established (by the insurer, or by a pool of insurers, or by authorities)? What uncertainty results from it?– At the end of the year, what is to be deduced from the profit or loss? In particular, is it advisable to change the pricing?Remark: this article provides a bird's eye view of the book entitled Assurance: comptabilité réglementation, acuriat (Economica, 2000) by the same authors; section 1 (which introduces terminology of insurance) is extensively reproduced, while others are dramatically summarized. The Geneva Papers on Risk and Insurance (2001) 26, 232–251. doi:10.1111/1468-0440.00109