Actuaries of Polish National Insurance are in the happy position that they have at their disposal a wealth of complete statistics which permits study of the level of chance damage (the loss-rate) and its elements such as frequency of occurrence, spread, intensity, etc. This welcomed situation stems from the fact that in Poland there is general insurance in certain sectors of the national economy. For instance, in the case of cooperative and individual (private) farms the entire property (buildings, products, livestock, real estate and machines, household furniture, etc.) is insured according to uniform principles against all hazards—fire, winds, floods, hail, death of animals and others.

This, among other things, makes possible the statistical determination of the intensity of chance damages (i.e. the extent of damage to a given object during one accident) in various elements of farm property.

Studies of this type have been of great practical importance in the activities of Polish National Insurance, first and foremost in the reconstruction of the insurance rates in connection with a change in the system to the “first risk” system (employed almost exclusively at present in farm insurance). Moreover, it is interesting that these studies have also served as auxiliary material in the elaboration of the optimum programme for the utilization of the funds allocated for preventing chance damages.

Studies on the distribution of the intensity of chance damages on insured objects have led to interesting results which have confirmed once again that this distribution is dependent on the structure of the objects insured and on the risks (hazards) covered by insurance protection; any hypotheses concerning these distributions must be verified in each case by trial statistical studies.