> Additionally, if the incident upon which you need to make a claim happens fairly early in the life of the policy, it's entirely worth it.
Yes, but the advice to self-insure is based on the average outcome, not the exception. Insurance companies aren't profitable in spite of the lucky few whose claims take place quickly, but because of the vast majority for whom this isn't true. And insurance companies are very profitable.
If you're writing thousands of policies, of course statistically you're going to profit because not all of them will claim before it has paid for itself. Once you pay the first claim, you've already collected 999 premiums at least once. But if you self-insure, you're only writing one policy, which puts all the risk back into it.
Yes, but the advice to self-insure is based on the average outcome, not the exception. Insurance companies aren't profitable in spite of the lucky few whose claims take place quickly, but because of the vast majority for whom this isn't true. And insurance companies are very profitable.