Systemic risk of insurers around the globe

We study the exposure and contribution of 253 international life and non-life insurers to systemic risk between 2000 and 2012. For our full sample period, we find systemic risk in the international insurance sector to be small. In contrast, the contribution of insurers to the fragility of the financial system peaked during the recent financial crisis. In our panel regressions, we find the interconnectedness of large insurers with the insurance sector to be a significant driver of the insurers’ exposure to systemic risk. In contrast, the contribution of insurers to systemic risk appears to be primarily driven by the insurers’ leverage.     

中国的“影子保险”:来自监管自然实验的证据

影子保险在金融稳定中扮演着重要角色,但现有文献较多关注影子银行,对影子保险关注不足。“影子保险”即保险公司通过再保险方式将保险业务转移给不受监管或者受监管较弱的关联企业的活动,这会推高其真实的杠杆水平,增加金融体系脆弱性。然而,由于影子保险的不透明性和缺少自然实验,现有研究仅基于有限数据或模型给出简单的特征事实或结构性估计,很少能从因果关系上清楚地识别影子保险活动及其机制。本文利用中国加强对中资保险公司(处理组)再保险关联交易监管的政策冲击这一自然实验,使用微观数据和双重差分方法,识别了中国金融体系中的影子保险活动。研究发现,相关监管有效降低了影子保险活动,这一效应对集团公司的影响尤为显著;在机制方面,相关监管通过影响中资保险公司资产负债表两端的结构性调整进而降低了其风险承担行为,提高了经营稳定性。本文方法对识别金融机构的监管套利和防范系统性金融风险具有一定参考意义。     

Systemic Risk in the Insurance Sector: A Review and Directions for Future Research

This article reviews the extant research on systemic risk in the insurance sector and outlines new areas of research in this field. We summarize and classify 48 theoretical and empirical research papers from both academia and practitioner organizations. The survey reveals that traditional insurance activity in the life, nonlife, and reinsurance sectors neither contributes to systemic risk nor increases insurers’ vulnerability to impairments of the financial system. However, nontraditional activities (e.g., credit default swap underwriting) might increase vulnerability, and life insurers might be more vulnerable than nonlife insurers due to higher leverage. Whether nontraditional activities also contribute to systemic risk is not entirely clear; however, the activities with the potential to contribute to systemic risk include underwriting financial derivatives and providing financial guarantees. This article is not only likely of interest to academics but also highly relevant for the industry, regulators, and policymakers.     

经济结构转型与“双支柱”调控框架

理解经济运行环境的变化才能更有针对性地制定和实施货币政策和宏观审慎政策。中国经济在2012年前后迈过工业化的高峰期,家庭部门发生从制造到服务的消费升级,企业部门出现从资本密集型向人力资本密集型的产业结构转型,中国的经济结构转型进程与高收入国家类似发展阶段的经历高度一致。经济结构转型过程中,传统资本密集型行业信贷需求大幅下降,新兴人力资本密集型行业信贷需求相对较低且在债务主导的金融服务体系中面临融资供给制约。由于市场内生的企业信贷供给和需求双双下降,总需求不足问题凸显。宏观经济稳定方面,宏观经济运行特征由此前的“易热难冷” 转向“易冷难热”,“债务—通缩”风险加大。这要求货币政策在执行中更加注重温和通胀目标,充分运用各种政策工具确保总需求和总供给的平衡。金融稳定方面,防范系统性风险的重点要与时俱进地调整。时间轴上要特别关注经济周期和金融周期下行叠加带来的系统性风险;空间轴上不仅要关注“大而不能倒”的系统重要性机构,还须加强“小广散”金融机构的稳定性,注重与其相关的风险传染。     

Engineered nanomaterials: risk perception,regulation and insurance

Concerns surrounding the health risk of engineered nanomaterials, effective regulation and the lack of specifically tailored insurance products for the nanotechnology sector are putting the industry’s long-term economic viability at risk. From the perspective of the underwriter, this article speculates on the relationship between risk perception, regulation and insurability. In the nanotechnology sector, regulators are currently failing to keep pace with innovation, and insurers generally lack guiding principles for underwriting occupational risk from nanomaterial exposure. Such vulnerabilities when combined with misguided risk perceptions can lead to the overpricing of risk transfer and ill-conceived regulatory initiatives, thus potentially exhausting resources and stifling innovation in the sector. In the absence of well-developed regulatory protocols, the insurance industry has, and will continue, to occupy a key role as an effective lobby in terms of improved risk management practice. We suggest that the insurance industry will increasingly rely on control banding frameworks and ‘risk mitigation at source’ methods developed in conjunction with their clients to manage severe acute diversifiable risks. Long tail risk will continue to represent a serious challenge to insurers and regulators. In the meantime, insurers will have to bridge their current needs with improvised solutions. As an example of one possible solution, we outline a framework that utilizes financial instruments to hedge an insurer’s exposure to uncertain estimates of these long-term risks.     

The Financial Crisis, Systemic Risk, and the Future of Insurance Regulation

This article considers the role of American International Group (AIG) and the insurance sector in the 2007–2009 financial crisis and the implications for insurance regulation. Following an overview of the causes of the crisis, I explore the events and policies that contributed to federal government intervention to prevent bankruptcy of AIG and the scope of federal assistance to AIG. I discuss the extent to which insurance in general poses systemic risk and whether a systemic risk regulator is desirable for insurers or other nonbank financial institutions. The last two sections of the article address the financial crisis's implications for proposed optional and/or mandatory federal chartering and regulation of insurers and for insurance regulation in general.     

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.     

Systemic risk and diversification across European banks and insurers

The mutual and cross company exposures to fat-tail distributed risks determine the potential impact of a financial crisis on banks and insurers. We examine the systemic interdependencies within and across the European banking and insurance sectors during times of stress by means of extreme value analysis. While insurers exhibit a slightly higher interdependency in comparison with banks, the interdependency across the two sectors turns out to be considerably lower. This suggests that downside risk can be lowered through financial conglomeration.     

Life insurance demand and borrowing constraints

The literature devoted limited attention to exploring the relationship between financial development and life insurance demand. Financial development supports life insurance supply by providing confidence in the financial system, more efficient payment systems, and higher availability of financial instruments. However, financial development reduces households' needs to save by relaxing borrowing constraints, indirectly affecting life insurance demand. We contribute by providing a demand‐driven explanation of the negative consequences of financial development on life insurance development. We find that more credit‐constrained countries have higher life insurance penetration on average. Indirectly, the role of borrowing constraints signifies the importance of life insurance policies as a financing tool in case of the realization of various background risks. This study integrates the knowledge from life insurance theory, life insurance lapse, policy loans demand, and saving under liquidity constraints literature and produces implications for researchers, policymakers, and life insurers.     

国外保险企业风险预警的理论与实践及对中国的启示

有效的企业风险预警,能够降低企业破产成本、维护相关利益者权益、节约行政资源、防范系统性风险.保险作为"经济助推器"和"社会稳定器",肩负着为经济社会管理风险的特殊职能,保险业自身的安全,对整个经济社会的稳定具有特殊重要的作用,建立针对保险企业的风险预警机制已极为迫切.本文介绍了国外保险企业风险预警的理论和实践,希望能对...     

Curbing systemic risk in the insurance sector: A mission impossible?

This paper addresses the issue of systemic risk in insurance and investigates how financial markets evaluate the introduction of a new regulation addressed to global systemically important insurers (G-SIIs). We analysed the stock price reactions and the evolution of the distance-to-default of a sample of 44 of the world's largest insurers to the publication of the first list of 9 G-SIIs and the release of information regarding their new capital requirements and other policy measures. The results of our event study suggest that, overall, investors doubt the effectiveness of the new regulatory framework in reducing systemic risk in the insurance sector and curbing the moral hazard implications of a “too systemic to fail” policy.     

Shadow banking,insurance and financial sector stability

Motivated by the recent financial crisis and the near collapse of the insurance giant American International Group (AIG), we empirically study the link between the insurance sector, the size of the shadow system and financial stability across countries. Using the Z-score as a measure of financial stability and the ratio of insurance assets to GDP for 26 countries during the period 1998–2011, this paper shows that: (i) the insurance sector is negatively and significantly related to financial stability, and that (ii) using the shadow banking system as a channel, the insurance sector is detrimental to financial stability for countries with a high level of shadow banking assets.     

Bank liabilities channel

The financial intermediation sector is important not only for channeling resources from agents in excess of funds to agents in need of funds (lending channel). By issuing liabilities it also creates financial assets held by other sectors of the economy for insurance or liquidity purpose. When the intermediation sector creates less liabilities or their value falls, agents are less willing to engage in activities that are individually risky but desirable in aggregate (bank liabilities channel). The paper shows how financial crises driven by self-fulfilling expectations about the liquidity of the banking sector are transmitted to the real sector of the economy. Since the government could also create financial assets by borrowing, the paper analyzes how public debt affects the issuance of liabilities by the financial intermediation sector.     

保险对经济增长的贡献研究——基于中国实证

保险业在经济中的重要性已得到逐步的认识,但相关研究还是较少。保险作为金融中介,通过强大的筹资功能,为社会创造价值。本文运用两个理论模型分别论证了财产保险为经济提供了分担机制,寿险为经济发展提供了更多长期资本,且两类保险对技术进步也有促进作用,保险制度直接与间接地提高了社会产量,推动了经济增长。以我国为实证,结果表明,人寿保险和财产保险对GDP增长有贡献作用。     

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.     

On the exposure of insurance companies to sovereign risk—Portfolio investments and market forces

A sovereign debt crisis can have significant knock-on effects in the financial markets and put financial stability at risk. This paper focuses on the transmission of sovereign risk to insurance companies as some of the largest institutional investors in the sovereign bond market. We use a firm level panel dataset that covers large insurance companies, banks and non-financial firms from nine countries over the time period from 1 January 2008–1 May 2013. We find significant and robust transmission effects from sovereign risk to domestic insurers. The impact on insurers is not significantly different from that on banks but larger than for non-financial firms. We find that systemically important insurers are more closely linked to the domestic sovereign. Based on European data, we show that risks in sovereign bond portfolios are an important driver of insurer risk, which is not reflected in current insurance regulation (incl. Solvency II in Europe).     

金融双语

存款保险制度 存款保险制度主要是通过建立存款保险机构，运用风险补偿机制来保护存款人免受因金融机构破产而导致的财物损失，从而提高公众对银行部门的信任，有助于金融系统的稳定。同时，通过防止流动性恐慌，存款保险还可以使实体经济避开银行体系不稳定造成的部分恶劣影响。存款保险制度有隐性的和显性的两种。     

气候风险对中国农业经济发展的影响——异质性及机制分析

科学评估气候风险的经济影响是管理气候风险的第一步。本文利用气象站数据和各地区农业经济数据,实证分析了气候风险对我国农业经济发展的影响,并重点分析了该影响的异质性和相关机制。结果显示,气候风险较高地区的农业经济发展要显著慢于其它地区,且该结果在多种模型设定下以及不同衡量变量下都保持一致。异质性分析表明,气候风险对同一地理区域内人均收入水平较低地区的影响更加显著;对农业保险保障水平较高或农业现代化水平较高地区的影响则较小,说明农业保险的发展和农业现代化水平的提高可以降低气候风险对农业经济的负面影响。机制分析表明,从农业投入和产出关系来看,气候风险直接作用于农业经济产出,而非通过影响投入再作用于产出;从气候风险和自然灾害关系来看,气候风险会通过增加自然灾害严重程度对农业经济发展产生不利影响,同时也会直接对农业经济造成负面影响。本文研究为管理气候风险、促进现代农业经济发展和保障粮食供给安全提供了有益启示。     

Systemic Risk,Financial Crisis,and Credit Risk Insurance

Differing from conventional insurance firms whose underwriting business does not contribute to systemic risk, credit risk insurance companies providing credit protections for debt obligations are exposed to systemic risk. We show that credit risk insurers (CRIs) underperformed conventional insurance companies during the 2007–2009 financial crisis, and such underperformance is attributed to the greater systemic risk of CRIs. We also find that the credit spreads of insured bonds increase significantly after their insurers are downgraded or put in the negative watch list. We control for alternative factors affecting bond credit spreads and the result is robust.     

Corporate Hedging in the Insurance Industry

Abstract

In this paper we investigate the extent to which insurance companies utilize financial derivatives contracts in the management of risks The data set we employ allows us to observe the universe of individual insurer transactions for a class of contracts, namely, those normally thought of as off-balance-sheet (OBS) We provide information on the number of insurers using various types of derivatives contracts and the volume of transactions in terms of notional amounts and the number of counterparties. Life insurers are most active in interest rate and foreign exchange derivatives, while property/casualty insurers tend to be active in trading equity option and foreign exchange contracts Using a multivariate probtt analysis, we explore the factors that potentially influence the existence of OBS activities. We also investigate questions relating to whether certain subsets of OBS transactions (for example, exchange traded) are related to such things as interest rate risk measures, organizational form and other characteristics that may discriminate between desired risk/return profiles across a cross-section of insurers. We find evidence consistent with the use of derivatives by insurers to hedge risks posed by guaranteed investment contracts (GICs), coilater-alized mortgage obligations (CMOs), and other sources of financial risk