Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. The response format is open.

For very high-net worth individuals, does it make sense to not have insurance?
Indeed, there is conservation of money.  If the insurance companies have those big buildings and television commercials and CEOs, then that money comes from only one place: the insurance premiums of customers.  To say insurance is a good deal is either The benefit and cost of insurance for most: Indeed, of all the answers here, James Turner's is best.  If you can't afford to lose something, it is vital to insure it.  Ideally insurance would be a non-profit operation to best cover this.  Such that people would as a whole lose nothing.  Theoretically it could even be slightly for profit by making wise investment decisions, and benefiting from the future value of money by beating inflation.  But they don't (see this writeup for slightly dated information on health, and this Wikipedia article for more direction). But even if you are taking an average loss (by using a profit-making insurance company), by taking insurance you avoid the situation where you're crippled by a catastrophe.  You are paying a fee to hedge your losses.  Like James said, insure what you cannot afford to lose.  But realize you're going into a situation where the overall net is an average loss of between 10-50% of your money, on average.  Basically you're playing the lottery, except your net losses mostly go to fund the company and the CEOs rather than nominally support education. But you sounded like you understood those ideas well, so...   Can you self insure? As others noted, yes, there is the option of self insurance in most places.  Even even often when insurance is considered as required.  For example, in the US, basically car insurance coverage is required.  But generally you are legally able to self insure to cover this requirement:   The cost of self insuring: There is one cost to self-insure: time.  It takes time to research the laws, time to to satisfy those requirements, and then time to find/setup all the care providers (doctors, mechanics, lawyers, etc). When is it worth it?  First, again, you must satisfy the prerequisite: you are able to financially handle the loss of the topic under consideration. At a commenter's request, here is an attempt to better spell out this requirement (though it doesn't appear pertinent to the question asked, it is indeed very important not to mistakenly assume you satisfy this requirement). Can you comfortably cover the level of insurance you would otherwise be taking out.  $50,000/$100,000/$50,000 is a common reasonable insurance level, so that would be $200,000.  Basically, have enough money to cover the loss of your car, your possible injury expenses, and most importantly the damage and medical of anyone else you hit.  You would need to have that value available, optimally in your accounts.  Alternatively, you could weigh it against your assets, such that if you had low accounts but a paid off $200,000 house, you could conceivably sell your property and still be able to survive financially afterwards.  However, it is indeed dangerous to make this assumption, as there may be additional costs and troubles in selling assets, and you may fail to recognize how precious the property is to you.  Having at least double or triple in property you'd be willing to part with might be a more comfortable number.  Again, the main idea is: can you afford to lose the insured value tomorrow?  Though you hope it wouldn't happen, if someone came and took $200,000+ of yours tomorrow, would you be able to adjust to it relatively easily?  If the answer is yes, you've satisfied this requirement.  In many states it's easier to understand whether you can meet this requirement: it instead becomes can you take out the liability bond required. If you've met that requirement, then it comes down to the time you'd lose versus the savings you'd gain.  To get a fair idea, you'll need: The premium you would pay to purchase the insurance: Since you are likely losing 10-50% of your premiums, it should be fair to make a rough estimate of value lost by using 25% for most purposes (especially given that this still ignores the future value/opportunity cost of your money, which could often be 5-10% if invested well) The value of your time:  You must properly identify either:   A rough estimate of how much time it will take you to research the legal requirements and meet them, and then to research/handle the subsequent needs that come up which the insurance would take care of in an average year.  So try to balance those typical years where you wouldn't have a lot of work to do with a year where you'd need to call repair mechanics or find health practitioners.  Perhaps aim high, research/calling usually takes more time than we think.   Is this calculation positive? Your estimated net annual benefit (or cost) from self insuring is: 0.25 * (Insurance Premium Per Year) - (Estimated Value of Your Time)*(Estimated Hours Of Work\Research to Self-Insure Per Year)  This is a rough estimate.  But if the result is quite positive (and you can afford to cover the hit the insurance would otherwise cover), you're likely better off self-insuring. If the result is quite negative (or you can't cover the possible costs insurance would cover), you're probably better off buying insurance. Finally, indeed there are still a few other factors on each side to consider... Most often those additional pluses and minuses probably are smaller than the primary cost/benefits spelt out earlier.  But if you're rich enough to have the money, you're in a situation where you can likely sacrifice a little income to have your peace of mind.  So there's certainly a lot to consider in it.  But if you're a self starter, I believe you're right that you'll find it's more worthwhile to self-insure if you indeed have the resources.