SIGNIFICANT DEVELOPMENTS IN MOTOR INSURANCE IN THAILAND

ABSTRACT: The 1990s saw rapid economic growth in Thailand. Motor insurance grew enormously, becoming the biggest income earner for total general business (both for the whole industry and for many individual companies). Cash flow underwriting seemed to be the recipe for success in a competitive market.
The agency distribution system for motor insurance in Thailand is almost wholly controlled by finance companies and banks, which expect a high rate of commission. Their delay in paying over the premiums to the insurers created bad-debt problems after the 1997 economic crash, when the government closed many of these financing companies. This also meant an end to the motor insurance boom, with a decrease in premium income and a reduction in investment returns and assets, thus threatening solvency margins.
Earlier in the decade, in 1993, there was the introduction of compulsory third-party insurance, followed by the establishment by the government of provincial bureaus to help these third-party claimants. And in 2000, just in time for the next wave of economic growth, a new rating system has been introduced to bring sophistication to the basic process of evaluating and pricing different risks, though still within a government tariff system. Liberalization is coming, in stages, and the industry is making changes so as to be in a fit state to cope with the increased competition and opportunities that this liberalization will bring.
Like all setbacks, the crash of 1997 was an opportunity for Thai motor insurers to examine the fundamentals of their business and plan to increase their professionalism. Some are already well on the way to high-quality service, meeting ISO 9002 standards, and have begun Internet trading.     

An Exploratory Analysis of Insurer Groups

Grouping is a widespread and interesting phenomenon of the insurance industry, among both life‐health insurers and property‐liability insurers. Recognizing the potentially important implications of group membership for insurer behavior and characteristics, numerous academic researchers using insurance company data have included a dummy variable in their regression analysis to control for group membership. However, it has never been clear exactly what is being controlled for when such a variable is included. This article attempts to shed light on this question. Results indicate that group affiliated insurers tend to be larger than unaffiliated insurers, are more likely to be licensed in New York, are more likely to be stock firms than mutuals, and are likely to be less geographically concentrated.     

On the Economics of Postassessments in Insurance Guaranty Funds: A Stakeholders’ Perspective

This article proposes a model that suggests there are contagion effects among members of an insurance guaranty fund when postassessments are charged to all other insurers upon the failure of a member company. Indeed, these extraordinary payments are shown to increase the default rate of other firms in the industry, ultimately lowering the value of corporate claims as well as government tax claims. The model is also used to examine the efficiency of different recoupment mechanisms (both existing and new) used by regulators and insurers to potentially reduce these contagion effects. Analysis allows us to stipulate the conditions under which a “tax carryforward” provision could be more efficient than the usual recoupment mechanisms known as “premium rate surcharge” and “premium tax credit.”     

Analyst Earnings Forecasts for Publicly Traded Insurance Companies

Several trends in the insurance and financial services industry, including demutualizationconsolidation, and deregulation, have attracted increasing attention from investors and financial analysts. This paper investigates the accuracy of the earnings forecasts of financial analysts for insurance companies. Our empirical results indicate that analyst forecasts outperform random walk time-series forecasts. Furthermore, we find that both disagreement over earnings forecasts among analysts and the relative forecasting error in the mean forecasts is smaller for life insurers than for property-casualty insurers, whereas the relative errors for forecasts for multiple-line insurers are in between the two. Forecasting error is a negative function of firm size and the number of analysts who are following a company, and is a positive function of the disagreement among analysts.Analyst forecasts have a timing advantage over the random walk model. Our results also suggest that the fair value reporting requirement (SFAS 115), which has been in effect since 1994, has enhanced the accuracy of analyst forecasts. The SFAS 115 has improved the superiority of analyst forecasts over the random walk forecasts for life insurers, but not for property-casualty insurers, and there is a weak improvement for multiple-line insurers. JEL Classification: G15     

Recent Developments in the Aviation Insurance Industry

The aviation industry has been hard hit in recent years. While there are numerous factors that have contributed to the industry's dilemma, rising and volatile insurance premiums—particularly after the events of 9/11—have posed a particular problem for many airline managers. Despite a general trend for accident rates involving commercial passenger airplanes to decrease as aviation technology has advanced over the years and airplanes have become safer, the aviation insurance market has been far from stable. This article provides an overview of how the aviation insurance industry works and how it has changed in recent years. We take a look at how the risk is spread between insurers, how insurers treat deliberate acts of violence, and lastly, how insurers price the risk. Our article shows that the aviation insurance market has undergone considerable changes in recent years and that it has adjusted to the post-9/11 aviation insurance realities being reasonably ready to handle events of an even more catastrophic magnitude.     

对外开放背景下的外资保险公司监管

外资保险公司的引进所带来的机遇与挑战并存。不应只看到利用外资带来的正面影响,同时还应该正视利用外资给中国保险业带来的潜在风险。只有正确地识别、测量和控制风险,才能真正做到外资保险为我所用。监管机构需要增强对外资保险的监管能力以切实提高监管效果,应建立适应全球金融发展趋势的监管组织体系;转变监管职能和重点;改进监管手段和方式。     

An Analysis of Contingent Commission Use by Property–Liability Insurers

The payment of contingent commissions in the property–liability insurance industry has long been commonplace, but recent events have made the practice highly controversial. Even prior to these events, wide variation existed among insurers in their use of contingent commissions. In this article, we examine the determinants of whether or not an insurer chooses to pay contingent commissions at all, as well as the determinants of the extent of their use for those insurers that pay them. We find a number of variables that have a significant relation to the use and extent of use of contingent commissions.     

保险公司资产负债管理技术及指标研究

保险公司的经营特点及其所面临的风险决定了资产负债管理是保险业的管理核心之一。上世纪末的利差损问题无疑引起了保险业对资产负债管理的重视。但是目前国内保险业的资产负债管理无论在公司实务上还是监管上仍存在着诸多不足。本文尝试从资产负债管理的历史出发,介绍资产负债管理的理论、监管与实务情况,创新之处在于对大量的公司实务情况进行了调研及梳理,并对理论、实务与监管之间的联系及发展作出了一定的思考。     

我国保险资金境外投资风险防范探析

随着保险业发展速度的加快,保险投资资金的不断增多,使保险资金境外投资逐步成为国内保险机构扩展投资领域、提高保险资金投资收益的重要途径。但与境外投资高收益相伴的是不容忽视的高风险,2008年下半年以来,随着美国次级债风波演变为百年难遇的全球性金融危机,国际金融形势风云突变,对外投资形势日趋严峻,我国保险资金对外投资面临着严峻的风险。本文通过对当前我国保险业保险资金境外投资面临的风险分析,采取理论与案例相结合的方式,从保险监管方式、内部风险控制、资产负债匹配、投资比例限制及投资人才储备等方面提出我国保险资金境外投资风险的具体策略和措施。     

Economies of scope in financial services: A DEA efficiency analysis of the US insurance industry

This paper investigates economies of scope in the US insurance industry over the period 1993–2006. We test the conglomeration hypothesis, which holds that firms can optimize by diversifying across businesses, versus the strategic focus hypothesis, which holds that firms optimize by focusing on core businesses. We analyze whether it is advantageous for insurers to offer both life-health and property-liability insurance or to specialize in one major industry segment. We estimate cost, revenue, and profit efficiency utilizing data envelopment analysis (DEA) and test for scope economies by regressing efficiency scores on control variables and an indicator for strategic focus. Property-liability insurers realize cost scope economies, but they are more than offset by revenue scope diseconomies. Life-health insurers realize both cost and revenue scope diseconomies. Hence, strategic focus is superior to conglomeration in the insurance industry.     

Spillover effects of increased health insurance enrollment on workers’ compensation insurance

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) was designed to increase the accessibility and affordability of health insurance. While the ACA did not contain direct provisions related to workers’ compensation (WC), because health‐related coverage is a significant portion of WC costs, the ACA could have unintentionally impacted the WC market. Specifically, expanded health insurance enrollment could reduce WC losses and result in higher performance among insurers participating in the WC market. Using insurer‐state level data, we consider the impact of increased health insurance enrollment on the performance of property‐casualty (PC) insurers. Utilizing multiple measures of performance, we find that the post‐ACA period is generally associated with greater profitability for PC insurers operating in the WC market, a positive unintended consequence of this federal regulation.     

Adverse Selection and the Opaqueness of Insurers

While adverse selection problems between insureds and insurers are well known to insurance researchers, few explore adverse selection in the insurance industry from a capital markets perspective. This study examines adverse selection in the quoted prices of insurers' common stocks with a particular focus on the opacity of both asset portfolios and underwriting liabilities. We find that more opaque underwriting lines result in greater adverse selection costs for property-casualty (P-C) insurers. A similar effect is not apparent for life-health (L-H) insurers and we find no effect of asset opaqueness on adverse selection for either L-H or P-C insurers.     

我国保险业在后危机时代的风险管理

美国次贷危机引发的华尔街金融风暴席卷全球,危机延伸到保险业导致美国保险巨头美国国际集团AIG由政府接管,金融危机使得人们更深层次地意识到风险管理对于金融业的重大意义。保险作为一种风险管理方式,其行业自身的风险管理尤为重要。本文借鉴国外保险公司的风险管理策略,并结合我国构建风险管理体系的经验与实际情况,提出关于构建我国保...     

保险公司同质化态势与专业化经营问题研究

目前我国保险市场同质化竞争态势比较明显,严重阻碍着保险业的持续健康发展。大部分中资保险公司的保险产品开发及定位、经营管理体制、竞争手段、保险服务等方面模仿现象突出,差异性不明显,甚至没有差异性。这种现象已成为我国保险公司继续健康快速发展的瓶颈。专业化经营将成为保险公司发展的必由之路,主要包括保险产品专业化、保险服务专业化、保险资产管理专业化、保险人才专业化和保险市场监管专业化等。     

Adaptation and change in the Australian life insurance industry: an historical perspective

In the wake of the deregulation of the financial sector in Australia in the 1980s and 1990s the life insurance industry has undergone a period of rapid change and reorganisation. Part of this adjustment has been the move towards the integration of financial service provision and the rise of bancassurance. This paper investigates the strategies adopted by Australian life insurers as they moved into the increasingly competitive environment triggered by the lifting of government restrictions on banking practices. It compares the approach of life insurers with that adopted in an earlier period of expansion and change. During the 1950s and 1960s an influx of foreign owned insurance companies into the Australian market precipitated the diversification of domestic life insurers into other insurance markets. The catalyst for change in both cases was the change in information costs brought about by the change in the competitive environment. The experience of the Australian life insurance market would suggest that there is a link between changing information costs and changing organisational structures. However this link is circumscribed by the institutional environment.     

Capturing Uncertainty: The role of insurance in the construction of modern life

Traditional accounts of the history of insurance typically treat demand as a function of the availability of new and lower-cost forms of insurance. This paper draws on more recent research to illustrate the dialectical relationship between demand for and supply of insurance services as the industry developed from the 17^th through the 20^th centuries. We argue that insurance companies have played a key historical role in creating a market for their products by transforming both popular and official attitudes towards insurance. Over the course of time insurers have been singularly successful in combining a measure of moral exhortation with the effective inculcation of precautionary behavior while at the same time discriminating against risky actions through the imposition of high prices or even the outright denial of insurance coverage. Ultimately these developments have allowed the insurance companies to act as gatekeepers by interposing themselves between the state, the public, and other industries.     

Auditor quality,audit fees,organizational structure,and risk taking in the US life insurance industry

Using a system of simultaneous equations, this study examines the relation among external audit monitoring, in the US life insurance industry. We find insurers with higher leverage risk and surplus risk are more likely to use Big‐4 auditors and to pay higher fees. In return, insurers hiring Big‐4 auditors and paying higher audit fees have lower leverage risk and surplus risk. Second, the results suggest that mutual life insurers have a higher leverage risk and surplus risk than stock life insurers. This evidence is in contrast to that for property–liability insurance companies. Third, we find insurers are less likely to hire Big‐4 auditors and to pay higher audit fees after implementation of the Sarbanes–Oxley Act (SOX). Finally, life insurers with Big‐4 auditors or paying higher audit fees are more likely to take lower risks after the implementation of SOX.     

Cream Skimming: Innovations in Insurance Risk Classification and Adverse Selection

We demonstrate how innovations in insurance risk classification can lead to adverse selection, or cream skimming, against insurers that are slow to adopt such pricing innovations. Using a model in which insurers with insufficient pricing data cannot differentiate between low‐ and high‐risk policyholders and therefore charge both the same premium, we show how innovative insurers develop new risk classification data to identify overcharged low‐risk policyholders and attract them from rival insurers with reduced prices. Less innovative insurers thus insure a growing percentage of high‐risk customers, resulting in adverse selection attributable to their informational disadvantage. Next, we examine two cases in which “Big Data” innovations in risk classification led to concerns about cream skimming among U.S. auto insurers. First, we track the rapid adoption of credit‐based insurance scores as pricing variables in personal auto insurance markets. Second, we examine the growing popularity of usage‐based insurance programs like telematics, plans in which insurers use data on policyholders’ actual driving behavior to set prices that attract low‐risk customers. Issues associated with the execution of such pricing strategies are discussed. In both cases, we document how rival insurers quickly adopt successful innovations to reduce their exposure to adverse selection.     

Addressing insurance price discrimination in an era of diversity,equity, and inclusion

The early 2020s diversity, equity, and inclusion movement has prompted debate about banning the use of suspect insurance pricing variables because they discriminate against protected classes, such as gender. This paper demonstrates how banning an insurance pricing variable currently used in insurance pricing models can result in regulatory adverse selection if the ban heterogeneously combines policyowners with different expected losses into the same risk class, contrary to risk-based pricing. The paper begins by describing several recent regulatory and judicial decisions to ban insurance pricing variables. It next describes the process used by insurers to set insurance prices, followed by a discussion of applicable insurance discrimination laws. Using a simple risk aversion model, the paper next examines whether a ban on gender-based auto insurance pricing in California in 2019 results in regulatory adverse selection. The paper concludes by describing possible alternative pricing variables available to auto insurers if gender-based pricing is banned.     

On the Lack of Participating Policy Usage by Stock Insurance Companies

Stock insurers can reduce or eliminate agency conflicts between policyholders and stockholders by issuing participating insurance. Despite this benefit, most stock companies don't offer participating contracts. This study explains why. We study an equilibrium with both stock and mutual insurers in which stockholders set premiums to provide a fair expected return on their investment, and with a policyholder who chooses the insurance contract that maximizes her expected utility. We demonstrate that stockholders cannot profitably offer fully participating contracts, but can profitably offer partially participating insurance. However, when the policyholder participation fraction is high, the fair‐return premium is so large that the policyholder always prefers fully participating insurance from the mutual company. Policies with lower levels of policyholder participation are optimal for policyholders with relatively high risk aversion, though such policies are usually prohibited by insurance legislation. Thus, the reason stock insurers rarely issue participating contracts isn't because the potential benefits are small or unimportant. Rather, profitability or regulatory constraints simply prevent stock insurers from exercising those benefits in equilibrium.