It sounds like you have a very specific history of insurance and way of thinking about it in your country, but insurance goes back to the Ancient world and was one of the first financial instruments if not the first. When you take out a policy, yes you are mitigating the risk of “something bad” happening, to you, and of it does happen, then the insurer makes you whole as far as the contract was concerned.

But that means you’re gambling, and so is the insurer. You’re making a bet on a certain outcome and so is the insurer. If you “win” that bet, e.g. the cargo on your ship was stolen by pirates and you insured against that, then your insurer “loses” and has to pay out. If nothing happened during the voyage though and you safely delivered your cargo, then the insurer “wins” and you “lose”, but what you’ve “lost” is a fraction of the value of the cargo which is better than the loss of the whole cargo. The insurer makes money by pooling these bets, betting that it will win more bets than it loses.