Under the heading group insurance may be included all types of insurance contract whereby a number of persons are by one policy covered against a given risk. In present day practice, however, its use is chiefly confined to the one special policy under which the lives of a group of persons—usually a firm's employees— are assured on a One Year Renewable Term basis, usually without medical examination.

Group insurance in this form originated in America and has proved extremely popular both in that country and in Canada. In this country it has not received so warm a welcome and it is only within recent years that British offices have given it their serious attention.