In the late 1980s and early 1990s, pro-Moscow regimes fell down in socialist countries, and in 1991 the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) itself collapsed and was replaced by 15 post-Soviet republics. At the same time, the former countries of the Eastern Europe, members of the so-called socialist camp, as well as Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia were accepted into the European nations family and turned to the European development model. And the rest of the USSR countries were mostly left to their own. Therefore, each post-Soviet country has chosen its own way for market development.

For example, countries such as Russia and Kazakhstan, rich in natural resources liquid on the international market, as well as Ukraine and most other post-Soviet countries, now part of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), chose the path of “shock therapy” – a rapid transition to a market economy. As a result, former large Soviet giants in the production of oil and gas, precious and non-ferrous metals, industrial enterprises were privatized by non-transparent schemes, usually for a symbolic amount and natural rent from the mining and processing of raw materials was kept in the offshore accounts of the new oligarchy (Materials of the international conference, 2004).

Uzbekistan has decided not to privatize enterprises related to the mining of valuable natural hydrocarbon resources, precious, rare and non-ferrous metals in order to direct natural rent to the state budget and finance country development programs, education, healthcare, transport and other production and non-production infrastructure (Karimov, 2012, p. 167).

Of course, the starting conditions in the CIS countries were unequal. If the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita in Russia at that time was $3.4 thousand, in Kazakhstan – $1.5 thousand then in Kyrgyzstan it was $575, Armenia – $572, Tajikistan – $243. Obviously, most of these countries, which had never previously pursued their independent economic policy, after taking over the country governance immediately faced such depressing conditions as a triple deficit of the state budget, trade and payment balances, disruption of production relations with other former USSR countries, the closure of most industrial enterprises, galloping inflation and unemployment.

The amount of financial support provided by the international financial, primarily Bretton- Wood institutions, in post-Soviet countries was significantly less than in European post-Soviet countries and was of a corrective nature. It should be noted that International Financial Institutions have concentrated mainly on the support of the Russian Federation and Ukraine, spending billions of dollars for financial support.

It must be admitted that the Bretton-Wood institutions themselves turned out to be not prepared for the USSR unexpected collapse and, when developing recommendations for the post-Soviet countries economic policy, were too naive and unreasonably optimistic which led to the economic crisis deepening in countries with transition economies.

A striking example confirming this thesis is the resounding default of Russia and the state financial system bankruptcy in 1998 (Galeev, 2006).

As for the other republics of the former USSR, at that time they were considered as Russia’s backyard and the methodological and financial assistance provided was quite modest. For example, in 1993, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) allocated only 160 million US Dollars to countries with more than 20 million people to support the programs of economic restructuring and free transition to currency convertibility (Sanghera et al., 2023).

Accordingly, financial markets and their most important component, insurance markets, developed in the general context of the accepted concept of economic and structural reforms of these countries. The insurance markets of post-Soviet countries have a common past and common feature, but each of them follows its own development model. It primarily depends on the state policy.

The history of the insurance markets development in the Central Asian states began the same for the CIS – everywhere the insurance industry comes from the Gosstrakh (Soviet State Insurance) which divisions became the basis for the largest national insurers formation. Later, private insurers, including those with foreign investment, became an alternative to state-owned companies (Azimov, 2021).

In the following years, despite the territorial and historical commonality of the countries, insurance markets developed according to rather different scenarios. Some republics have taken a course towards Western insurance markets models – these include, first of all, Kazakhstan which recently completed a reform to bring regulatory principles closer to EU directives. Others have developed looking at their neighbors’ experience and taking into account their own conditions. The path of Turkmenistan turned out to be especially specific – Turkmengosstrakh company kept the monopoly there.

At the same time, despite the close neighborhood, insurance markets are gradually developing in accordance with market principles, although there are general trends – the predominance of voluntary property insurance in the market structure, dependence on the mortgages and other types of loans development.

In order to accelerate the comprehensive and dynamic economic and social development and liberalization of the country the “Action Strategy in Five Priority Areas of Development of the Republic of Uzbekistan in 2017 – 2021” (hereinafter referred to as the Strategy) was approved and in order to carry out this Strategy a number of comprehensive programs and measures were developed (Decree of the President of the Republic of Uzbekistan, 2017).

In accordance with the objectives of the Strategy, the country devotes considerable attention to solving the problems of social protection of the population: consistent measures are being taken to ensure decent living conditions for the population, the health care and education systems are being fundamentally reformed, a program for the construction of affordable housing is being implemented, etc.

As noted in the World Bank Group’s annual report “Doing Business 2020”, Uzbekistan has implemented four reforms that allowed it to become one of the 20 countries that have achieved the greatest progress in improving the business climate. Uzbekistan took 69^th place (among 190 countries of the world) in the Doing Business 2020 rating scoring 69.9 points out of 100. And the authoritative British journal The Economist named Uzbekistan as the country of the year. The magazine notes that in 2019 “no other country has advanced as far as Uzbekistan”.

Liberalization, modernization and swift growth of the national economy lead to the expansion of the country’s insurance market and the new modern insurance products emergence. Agriculture modernization and accelerated development leads to the emergence of new types of insurance products in the field of agricultural insurance.

The main goal of the reforms carried out in the country by the above strategy was declared as the domestic economy transition to full-fledged market principles and mechanisms, and its close integration into the world economic system, deep structural reforms aimed at modernizing production and service sector, as well as the social sphere, providing for deep processing of local raw materials, access to the world export markets with high value added products, growth in employment, population real income in order to ensure growth in national well-being and citizens living standards. The implementation of the first stage of the Economic Transformation Strategy allowed Uzbekistan to become one of the most dynamically developing states in Central Asia.

Nowadays, in Uzbekistan the insurance development acquires national importance. In modern conditions, insurance in the country is developing on principles that are completely different from the centralized administrative-command system existed for 70 years. Therefore, the creation of insurance guarantees system on market conditions, the insurance services rapid development provided by non-state insurance companies in the Republic of Uzbekistan as a mechanism for reliable protection of the property interests of citizens, business entities and the state are extremely popular and a particularly significant element of a full-fledged modern business environment. The presence of the above conditions predetermines the monograph topic importance.

It should be noted that despite the research work and scientific research was carried out in practice, theoretical, methodological and individual practical issues related to improving the insurance development and application at the stage of economic modernization were not disclosed in a comprehensive manner. This situation further increases the significance of scientific and applied issues presented in the monograph as well as proposals and recommendations for their elimination.

The scientific significance of the research results presented in the monograph is determined by the possibility of using them both to improve the risk insurance methodology in the context of economic modernization, and in scientific research conducted in our country and aimed at the scientific and theoretical development of the following disciplines: “Insurance Theory”, “Insurance” and “Riskology”.

The practical significance of the research results lies in the development of methodological bases for regulatory documents and action programs aimed at further improving the insurance business in Uzbekistan.

The first chapter of the monograph considers the stages of formation of financial systems and insurance markets in post-Soviet countries, trends in insurance activities state regulation during the transition of post-Soviet states to a market economy and the main aspects of the legal regulation of insurance activities during the transition to a market economy in these countries.

The second chapter of the monograph contains in-depth study of the risk environment of legal entities and individuals in the conditions of modernization of the economy of the Republic of Uzbekistan, special attention is paid to innovation risks and regulatory compliance risks of the insurer. At the same time, as a working hypothesis, it is accepted that the risk management system effectiveness for individuals and legal entities in a modernized economy is largely determined by the quality and completeness of the stage of risk identification and analysis, and more preferable method of risk management for individuals and legal entities is where this stage of risk management for individuals and legal entities is carried out at professional level by trained people using settled methods.

The third chapter of the monograph is devoted to the theoretical and methodological aspects of the insurance development in the Republic of Uzbekistan. As a working hypothesis in our study, we adopted the thesis that domestic insurance market, as an industry market for the country’s financial market, is a set of insurance activities professional participants interacting in the technological, informational, economic and managerial spheres. It is accepted that the insurance market is in the process of endogenous evolutionary development, the driving factor of which is its inherent internal issues, processes and contradictions and should be studied as a system in the process of dynamic development. Promoting economic growth and development, the insurance market, its condition, structure, scale and variety of functions performed, in turn, reflect the development of the country’s economy, the quality of its institutions, and the business climate.

The fourth chapter of the monograph examines the historical development and modern trends in the insurance development in Uzbekistan. As a result of the research, it was found that the state of insurance in the period immediately preceding the independent development of the country did not contribute to the insurance culture development, did not take into account local characteristics and did not lead to the creation of national insurance model.

The role of insurance in achieving national sustainable development goals in Uzbekistan, issues of insurance companies’ financial sustainability as the basis for ensuring the insurance accessibility in managing risks of individuals and legal entities are discussed in the fifth chapter of the monograph. Assessing the solvency and financial stability of insurers is a rather complex task and requires the collection, processing, and interpretation of a large volume of statistical information, the use of labor-intensive economic-mathematical and probabilistic-statistical methods using modern applied software products. The chapter concludes that it is advisable to improve the system for calculating insurance provisions for certain insurance types.

The possibility for the national insurance model creation for the Republic of Uzbekistan and further insurance development as an element of the risk management system for individuals and legal entities in Uzbekistan are studied in the sixth chapter of the monograph. As part of the proposed strategy for the domestic insurance market development, a national insurance model is considered, including: classic commercial insurance and commercial mutual insurance types; modernized commercial insurance types (inclusive insurance, insurance with participation in the insurer’s profit); non-profit mutual insurance using the principles of financial co-participation on the basis of voluntary association of citizens living in the same neighborhood.

Proposed strategy implementation implies the availability of qualified specialists capable of working effectively within the framework of the national insurance model. Obviously, one of the conditions for successful insurance development is the presence of a system of training and retraining of highly qualified specialists, including effective retraining of employees of the country’s insurance organizations. At the same time, both specialists and managers in the insurance industry must have the most up-to-date knowledge about various aspects of the insurance development as the risk management system element for legal entities and individuals, problems and prospects for using the insurance potential as a factor of economic and social stability in the context of economy transformation of the Republic of Uzbekistan.

This monograph can be used by both researchers, graduate and undergraduate students, and specialists of insurance companies when studying the theoretical and methodological aspects of insurance innovative development in the Republic of Uzbekistan and solving the insurance business applied problems.