[malloyd]

The fundamental problem with insurance (and finance in general) in an RPG is they are probability games for the investors. But in a dramatic work like a game, the probabilities, both good and bad, are completely out of proportion to the real world. They have to be, because unusually good or bad stuff happening to the characters regularly is what makes the thing entertaining.

If you let PCs get insurance, they are just about certain to be collecting it at some point, which makes it look way too cheap unless you set the rate so high it looks ridiculous from a real world perspective. Conversely people investing in PCs are likely to see returns well above plausible too, but that's usually an invisible departure from reality. If you push a finance model too hard, you're either going to end up highlighting the unreality of the setting that has stuff happen to the adventurers all the time, or you are going to need to adjust the odds for the PCs so interestingly extreme stuff *doesn't* happen to them very often, in which case the players will probably get bored and do something else. So it's usually better not push too hard and just gloss over this sort of detail.