Someone recently asked me when to use each of the different variations of “assure”, “ensure”, and “insure”.
And as always, I didn’t just answer their question – I said I’d try to think of a way you can remember the difference more easily.
So I did!
Difference between assure vs ensure vs insure (verbs)
Assure = to reassure someone that everything is as it should be.
e.g. I can assure you that my team will meet its budget this financial year.
You can remember this because you can replace it with “reassure you”, which literally includes the word “assure”. If you type “reensure”, you’ll know it’s not going to work.
Ensure = to make sure that something does / doesn’t happen.
e.g. My team needs to ensure that it meets its budget for this financial year.
Insure = to get insurance against a bad event happening.
e.g. To insure against the risk of spending too much, my team will look at its budget once a month until the end of the financial year.
Difference between assurance, ensuring, and insurance
What does that look like when you’re using the noun version instead of the verb?
Assurance:
e.g. Can you give me any assurance that your team will meet their budget this financial year?
You can remember this because in this sentence, you want to be reassured, and the “assure” word within “reassure” is the same as in the noun “assurance”.
e.g. Can you reassure me that your team will meet their budget this financial year?
Ensuring:
There’s no such word as “ensurance” to match “assurance”, so instead, you would use the word “ensuring”.
e.g. Is there a way of ensuring that my team will definitely meet their budget?
This is the same as saying “making sure”.
Insurance:
e.g. If my team doesn’t meet their budget, do we have any insurance to protect against breaking the business unit’s forecast?
You can remember the difference between insurance and assurance because the cost of insurance these days is definitely not “reassuring”.
(C) All content written by TJ Withers, 2023. Give credit when sharing or reposting. Thank you!
TJ Withers 