Even Insurance companies require insurance. Reinsurance allows insurance companies to insure themselves against losses due to various risks, such as natural disasters and political unrest. Insurance companies are only allowed to write as much business as their assets allow. Therefore, if an insurance company has R10m in assets to cover its insurance responsibilities, but they want to increase their customer base, they will take out reinsurance to cover the additional insurance commitment. This will cover the company in the event a "mass claim" which cannot be covered. Reinsurance has also become incredibly sophisticated over the past years and some insurance companies use reinsurance as a "hedging" strategy. To mitigate market risk, insurance companies will usually not reinsure with only one reinsurance company, but rather spread their risk across multiple reinsurers. There are different kinds of reinsurance available to insurance including proportional, non-proportional, risk-attaching basis, loss-occurring basis and claims-made basis.