Do Property–Casualty Insurance Firms Locate to Minimize Insurance Premium Taxes?

States levy insurance premium taxes, which are essentially gross receipt taxes on premiums, with insurance companies paying the higher of the tax rate in the state in which the company is domiciled and the state in which the policy is written. Using firm‐level data for the property–casualty (P‐C) insurance industry, we estimate the extra insurance premium tax that P‐C insurance firms pay by not locating in the state that minimizes their insurance premium taxes. We find that only 4.78 percent of P‐C firms are located in the state that minimizes their insurance premium taxes. We explore the relationship between the extra tax paid and other factors that are thought to be associated with firm location choice. We find that P‐C firms appear to trade off higher taxes to locate in a state that is more urban.     

Sicherungssysteme für Finanzdienstleistungsunternehmen im europäischen Vergleich – Theorieperspektive

The contribution discusses the design of guarantee schemes for financial services firms, with a focus on insurance guarantee schemes. It lists reasons that contribute to the development of guarantee schemes, especially stemming from a market failure risk. It further describes the pros and cons of ex-ante and of ex-post premium payments, and sets out arguments for and against risk based premiums of insurance guarantee schemes. The contribution also investigates whether the existence of insurance guarantee schemes might lead to a more risky insurance firm policy. Finally it examines in how far consumer protection based on insurance guarantee schemes prevents consumer protection based on market discipline that should be achieved by the third pillar of Solvency II.     

Ownership Structure and Control: Property-Casualty Insurer Conversion to Stock Charter

We examine 98 property-casualty insurance companies that convert to stock charter from a mutual or reciprocal form of organization. Our evidence shows converting firms have low surplus, significant growth in premium income, and draw down on their non-financial assets in years prior to conversion. Following conversion there is significant growth in assets and the number of States licensed. We also show by examining evidence on the riskiness of firms' operations that converting companies began operating like stock companies prior to conversion. Thus, our evidence suggests there can be important costs associated with the operation of a mutual or reciprocal insurance company. These costs can include the opportunity costs associated with foregone investments arising because of higher incremental capital costs inherent in the mutual or reciprocal forms of ownership. There also is a cost disadvantage if a mutual or reciprocal is operating in activities more appropriate for the stock ownership form. These costs can in particular circumstances offset the advantage mutual ownership affords in controlling incentives to transfer wealth from policyholders to equityholders.     

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.     

降低保险公司营业费用的途径选择

营业费用居高不下是困扰我国寿险业发展的问题之一。寿险营业费用是保险费的重要组成部分 ,在保费的三大决定因素中是保险公司自身最可控的一个因素。本文从分析组成营业费用的三大费用即新合同费、合同维持费、收费费用出发 ,通过研究其各自对保费影响的权重 ,得出结论 :从降低合同维持费的途径来降低营业费用从而达至降低保险费的目的是最经济的。要降低合同维持费用 ,必须提高管理效率 ,改善IT系统 ,实现可持续开发     

参股保险业与企业流动性风险管理:基于货币政策变更背景

现阶段宏观经济政策不断变更给企业经营带来诸多不确定性,从而增加了流动性风险,而通过参股保险公司所建立的产融结合平台能使企业降低制度调整的风险成本。我们对此进行了实证分析,以2006年～2010年上市公司季度数据为样本,利用倾向概率配对模型控制样本内生性问题后实证检验发现:参股保险公司的上市公司日常现金持有水平和调整水平较未参股公司低,且在面对从紧货币政策时,这种流动性风险管理的提升效果更加突出。结论显示,上市公司与保险公司建立产融结合平台具有财务协同效应,部分抵消了货币政策变更不确定性的冲击。这一研究对于企业产融结合实践策略部署有着重要的现实意义,对保险行业引导产融结合趋势也有较强的实践参考价值。     

The Effect of Taxes on the Location of Property-Casualty Insurance Firms

States levy insurance premium taxes, which are essentially gross receipt taxes on premiums. An unusual characteristic of insurance premium taxes is that in each state in which an insurance company writes premiums, the firm pays the higher of the tax rate in the state in which the company is domiciled and the state in which the policy is written. Thus, the choice of location has a significant effect on the firm's tax liability. Using firm-level data for the property-casualty (P-C) insurance industry, we calculate the firm-specific tax rate for each P-C firm for every possible state of domicile. We estimate conditional logistic models to analyze the effect of insurance premium taxes on the choice of the state of domicile of existing and relocated firms. We find robust evidence of a small, negative, and statistically significant effect of these taxes on the choice of the state of domicile.     

Geographic diversification and firm value in the financial services industry

This paper investigates whether geographic diversification is value-enhancing or value-destroying in the financial services sector, broadly defined. Our dataset comprises approximately 3579 observations over the period from 1985 to 2004 and covers the entire range of U.S. financial intermediaries — commercial banks, investment banks, insurance companies, asset managers, and financial infrastructure services firms. We use two alternative measures of geographic diversification: (1) a dummy variable whether the firm reports more than one geographic segment and (2) the percentage of sales from non-domestic operations. Our results indicate that geographic diversification is not associated with a significant valuation discount in financial intermediaries. However, when accounting for the firms' main activity-areas, we find evidence of a significant discount associated with geographic diversification in securities firms and a premium in credit intermediaries and insurance companies. All these results are robust after taking into account functional diversification of the firms, a potential endogeneity of both functional and geographic diversification, and a potential value transfer from equity to debt holders by using estimates of the market value of debt.     

Effizienz und Eigentümerstruktur: Eine empirische Analyse des deutschen Lebensversicherungsmarktes

We provide new insights into the effect of ownership on efficiency by analyzing the German life insurance market over the period 2002–2005. Previous research on alternative organizational forms in the life insurance industry has focused on stock and mutual ownership only. Due to the uniqueness of the German insurance market, where privately-owned companies face competition by public insurers, we add to the recent literature the well known debate on public versus private ownership, by investigating stock, mutual and public ownership forms. Using traditional DEA, we calculate technical efficiency and cost efficiency scores to test the efficient structure hypothesis as well as the expense preference hypothesis. Our results give strong support to the latter, while we find no evidence that public ownership is an efficient corporate structure for life insurers. The group of stock firms dominates both, mutual and public insurers, although differences between stock and mutual companies are smaller than differences between stock and public firms. Analyzing within-group results, our findings suggest that high efficiency scores can be associated with certain firm characteristics which are publicly available: high returns on assets, low cancellation rates and low costs.     

Impact of Underwriting Cycles on the Solvency of an Insurance Company

Abstract

This paper studies the solvency of an insurance firm in the presence of underwriting cycles. A small or medium-size insurance company with a price-taker position in the market is considered. Its premium income is assumed to obey an autoregressive process with cycles. Specifically, the premium income for a specific calendar year is influenced by the market experience for the last couple years. Under this classical AR(2) dynamics governing the premium income, an explicit expression for the ultimate ruin probability is derived, using a martingale approach, in the lighttailed claims case. Furthermore, the logarithmic asymptotic behavior of the ultimate ruin probability as well as the typical path to ruin are investigated. Then a comparison is made with the classical case where the same company operates on a market without such cycles. Asymptotically, the presence of market cycles is shown to increase the risk for the company. Numerical illustrations are performed on Canadian motor insurance market data and support the theoretical analysis.     

中国A股市场存在品质溢价吗?

本文从价值投资的核心理念出发,基于盈利性、成长性、安全性、分红能力四个维度构建复合品质指标,并通过分析品质溢价在中国A股市场中的存在性来探讨价值投资的可行性和有效性。实证结果表明:(1)中国A股市场上存在显著为正的品质溢价,且品质溢价在控制其他相关变量后依然稳健存在;(2)高品质股票具有大市值、高成长特征,且品质溢价在大市值、高盈利的分组中更加显著;(3)品质溢价在不同时期下均能稳定存在;(4)中国A股市场上的品质溢价并非源于高风险承担,相反,由正向反馈偏好、博彩偏好、套利限制引起的错误定价有助于解释品质溢价。本文结论佐证了价值投资策略在中国A股市场的可行性和有效性,为培育良好投资理念、抑制过度投机、促进中国股市合理健康发展等提供了经验证据。     

AUDITOR CONCENTRATION AND MARKET SHARES IN THE US: 1988–1999 A DESCRIPTIVE NOTE

This paper examines from a historical perspective the effects of the Big Eight and Big Six accounting firm mergers on concentration measures and market share percentages of major accounting firms in the US large company audit market. Concentration ratios and Herfindahl indices reflect an increasingly concentrated audit market, though individual firms differ in their success at capturing market shares in the three exchanges examined, as well as in their ability to capture newly listed companies or companies switching auditors over the 1988 to 1999 period.     

Determinants of audit fees in Bangladesh

This paper reports the results of an analysis of the determinants of audit fees of both financial and non-financial companies in Bangladesh. The Bangladeshi audit services market is unusual in that there is no direct involvement of international audit firms in it. The results of the regressions show that the size of the auditee has the greatest influence on audit fees. Whilst there was no international Big Six grouping, it was possible to construct a group of Bangladeshi audit firms which commanded a price premium, based on their size and whether they had a link with an international firm of auditors. Financial services companies were found to have higher audit fees relative to non-financial companies. Subsidiaries of multi-national holding companies also had higher audit fees. The surprising result was that auditees which employed at least one qualified accountant had higher audit fees.     

Organizational Structure and Performance: Evidence From the Nonlife Insurance Industry in Japan

This study examines the impact of organizational structure on firm performance, incentive problems, and financial decisions in the Japanese nonlife (property‐casualty) insurance industry. Stock companies that belong to one of six horizontal keiretsu groups have lower expenses and lower levels of free cash flow than independent stock and mutual insurance companies. Keiretsu insurers also have higher profitability and higher loss ratios than independent insurers. With a limited sample size, there is some evidence that mutual insurers have higher levels of free cash flows, higher investment incomes, and lower financial leverage than their stock counterparts. Overall, empirical evidence suggests that each structure has its own comparative advantage.     

费率市场化对车险市场影响的经济学模型分析

为了解决车险市场长期以来高回扣、高代理费的混乱局面,我国在2003年1月1日推行费率市场化,但随之而来的是,不仅各保险公司仍然采用高代理费争夺市场,而且还出现了过低费率的非理性定价以及费率的频繁调整。本文将以事实为基础,通过分析代理人的经营情况和保险公司保费收入最大化的行为模式,建立一个保险需求函数的模型,来解释费率改革如何影响车险市场,并提出了反思和建议。     

Contracting with Present-Biased Consumers in Insurance Markets

Present bias challenges consumers with self-control problems when they implement precautionary efforts in insurance markets. To explore how rational insurance companies respond to this bias, this paper analyzes a contract design problem in a monopolistic insurance market with ex ante moral hazard. We consider two types of consumers with this bias: the “naifs”, who do not foresee the present bias and make decisions in a myopic way, and the “sophisticates”, who foresee the bias and incorporate it in the decision process. Relative to the benchmark case where consumers are time-consistent, we show that (i) present bias reduces the monopoly profit, regardless of the consumer type; (ii) present bias can either reduce or increase the coverage of the profit-maximizing insurance contract depending on the extent of the bias; and (iii) when present bias is severe, the insurance company can profitably exploit naifs but not sophisticates. These results still hold when consumers are heterogeneous and their types are unknown to the insurance company.     

Religiosity and risk taking: Is there a demand-side effect?

Religiosity may impact firm risk taking via its risk averse employees or through risk-sensitive demand. Using detailed financial statements of property-liability insurance companies, we find that both religiosity at firms' headquarters and the religiosity of firms' largest geographic market are negatively related to firm risk taking. For firms with one salient market, the impact of market religiosity is approximately the same order of magnitude as headquarter religiosity. Our evidence suggests that firm risk taking is influenced by customer demand.     

Fortune's Best 100 Companies to Work for in America: Do They Work for Shareholders?

In this paper we examine the market reaction to the announcement by Fortune of the 'Best 100 Companies to Work for in America.' Employees rate firms based on several criteria including trust in management, pride in work/company and camaraderie. To examine long‐term performance, we calculate raw and risk‐adjusted returns and then compare them to the returns of a matched sample of firms. In addition, we calculate the return on a buy and hold investment in the sample firm less the return on a buy‐and‐hold investment in a matched sample firm (BHARs). We find a statistically significant positive response to the announcement of the '100 best companies to work for' by Fortune . Also, based on all measures of risk‐adjusted return, we find these firms generally outperform the matched sample of companies. The BHAR results, although not exhibiting the level of statistical significance, are consistent with the raw and risk‐adjusted return results.     

The determinants of audit fees—evidence from the voluntary sector

Given the growing demand for accountability in the public sector, there is a need to begin to investigate audit pricing issues in this sector. This study makes three contributions. First, it develops and estimates, for the first time, a model of audit fee determinants for the charity sector. As in previous private sector company studies, size, organisational complexity and audit firm location are the major determinants. A positive association between audit fees and fees for non-audit services is also observed. Charity sector factors of empirical significance include the nature of the charity (i.e., grant-making or fund-raising), its area of activity and the importance of trading income. Separate models for grant-making and fund-raising charities reflect the relative complexity of the audit of fund-raising charities. Second, the lower auditor concentration in the charity sector market, compared to the private sector market, permits a more powerful test of whether large firms and/or auditor expertise are rewarded with a fee premium. In the more complex audit environment of fund-raising charities, the results show that Big Six audit firms receive higher audit fees (18.5%, on average) than non-Big Six firms. Also, non-Big Six audit firms with charity expertise are rewarded with a fee premium over other non-Big Six firms. Finally, the study demonstrates that the charity audit fee rate is significantly lower than that of private sector companies; in fact it is approximately half. A change in the reporting of charity audit fees is proposed to reflect any element of ‘charitable giving’ by the audit firm.     

Operational Improvement: The Key to Value Creation in Private Equity

With credit tightening having reduced the availability of leverage and intensified the competition for new deals, the economic recession has caused many companies in private equity firm portfolios to under-perform. These changes are forcing the private equity firms to depend even more on their ability to improve operating performance to achieve their investment goals and generate attractive returns. But few PE firms have proved capable of achieving such improvements in portfolio companies consistently over time.
In this paper, the authors discuss several ways that private equity firms use their operating expertise to drive value in their portfolio companies. They also examine the analytical framework used by some PE firms when assessing and prioritizing the many operational initiatives that could be undertaken within a newly acquired company. Part of that examination involves a detailed look at how private equity firms assemble an attractive mix of operational improvement projects in their initial 100-day plans. Finally, the authors explore one of the challenges faced by private equity firms when attempting to implement operational enhancements in newly acquired companies: bringing about change without alienating company management.
The real-world application of this approach is demonstrated with a case study that shows how one private equity buyer put its operational skills into practice to help create value within a mid-sized portfolio company.