Acquisition costs are one-off costs incurred when an insurance contract is taken out, such as acquisition commissions, the costs of the application or risk assessment, the costs of processing the application and the costs of issuing the insurance policy. They are also referred to as acquisition costs and form part of an insurance company’s operating costs.

Source reference: See the VDT publication “VDT Article Series, Part 5 | Glossary“ and the source cited there.