A risk which underwriters do not care to insure (such as a person with hypertension seeking health insurance) but which, because of State law or otherwise, must be insured. Insuring assigned risks is usually handled through a group of insurers (such as all companies licensed to issue health insurance in the State) and individual assigned risks are assigned to the companies in turn or in proportion to their share of the State’s total health insurance business. Assignment of risks is common in casualty insurance and less common in health insurance. As an approach to providing insurance to such risks, it can be contrasted with pooling of such risks in which the losses rather than the risks are distributed among the group of insurers.