The evolution of the Australian life insurance industry

The life insurance industry in Australia has traditionally been an important source of long term finance for both the public and private sector. However, very little historical analysis has been undertaken into an industry that constitutes a fundamental part of the economy's financial sector. The present climate of deregulation has initiated an irrevocable process of change within the industry. To comprehend the full implications of this change it is necessary to have an understanding of how the industry has evolved. This paper seeks to provide a background account of the growth of the life insurance industry in Australia highlighting the influences that have determined the structure of the industry.     

国际保险公司综合经营的实践及启示

综合经营被认为是传统保险向现代保险演进的分水岭,也是我国保险业当前发展面临的重大问题之一。本文研究了以瑞士再保险为代表的行业内综合经营和美国国际集团为代表的跨行业综合经营两种模式,并探讨了他们的经验教训及对我国的启示。本文认为,我国保险业的综合经营宜采取行业内模式,围绕核心竞争力,加强盈利模式整合,提升风险管理水平。     

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.     

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...     

The life and death of the Australian permanent building societies

Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries permanent building societies have been important providers of housing finance in Australia. Despite their long history Australian building societies have been disappearing at a steady rate since the early 1980s as they have converted into banks or become involved in mergers. The purpose of this paper is to give a background account of the history of Australian building societies and put forward explanations for their past popularity and more recent disappearance from Australian housing finance markets.     

我国保险资金运用现状、问题及策略研究

资产负债匹配管理永远是保险资金运用的核心内容。保险资金的合理运用直接影响到保险公司的盈利能力、竞争能力、承保能力和偿付能力。目前国内保险资金运用在资产负债匹配管理、投资结构、资金运用收益率、保险监管等方面存在不足。如果不能得到改善,我国保险业将会出现未来支付缺口的潜在风险。本文从保险资金运用与资产负债匹配管理的基本理论、保险资金运用的国际考察、我国保险资金运用现状及问题和对保险资金运用的策略建议四个方面,对保险资金运用的相关问题进行了深入探讨。     

Too Big to Change: The Stabilizing Force of Reserve Currency Preferences in the International Monetary System

We empirically investigate whether reserve currency preferences have been a source of stability for the international monetary system. Our findings suggest that reserve-hoarding countries, especially the emerging/developing countries, tend to adopt a stabilizing diversification strategy in their reserve portfolio allocation, buying (selling) assets denominated in depreciated (appreciated) currency. The result is robust to both International Monetary Fund and Bank for International Settlements measures of quantity changes of reserve shares. The stabilizing diversification strategy reveals the fact that reserve-hoarding countries may fall into a "dollar trap," and escaping from it may cause more valuation loss of their existing reserve portfolios.     

REITs风险收益特征及其资产配置作用

REITs具有“长期收益率高于股票、波动性低于股票”的风险／收益特征，更为重要的是REITs与股票、债券的相关系数低。机构投资者的传统组合中通常只包括债券、股票类证券，加AREITs可使组合优化，即组合有效边界向左上方移动，意味着在相同风险水平下，增加REITs后的组合可获得更高收益，或是为取得相同收益水平，增加REITs后的组合只承担更低风险。     

资管新规延期的原因及对策研究

资管新规的延期有利于处置存量资产,有助于减轻银行表内压力,有利于降低信用风险爆发概率,有利于平滑理财产品收益,也有助于实体经济应对疫情冲击。但是资管新规延期后,仍然面临着存量资产处置难、新产品发行接受度不高、机构转型动力不足等问题。为了避免资管新规一延再延,维护政策的严肃性、权威性,监管部门应提出退出路径、加强预期管理、明确奖惩措施、统一监管规则,并实行宽严相济、灵活有度的政策,保证资产管理行业转型真正落地生效。     

Scientific management and the pursuit of control in Britain to c.1960

The intellectual content and intentions of scientific management theories, aimed at industrial performance and harmony, were largely absent from British management practice for a great part of the last century. The limited interpretation of scientific management in Britain was characterised by a focus on control, at the heart of which was the use of piecework. Criticisms of piecework surfaced notably in the 1960s, linked to criticisms of scientific management as a whole. This article argues that any failure of piecework was not necessarily a failure of scientific management, given the latter's diluted role in twentieth century British management practice.     

欧美网络保险的最新发展及对我国的启示

随着互联网的兴起和快速发展,保险业正经历着一次重大变革。欧美国家的保险公司利用互联网等信息技术解决实际业务问题,为代理人、客户、潜在客户、合作伙伴提供各种服务,大幅降低了成本,并提高了业务效益、内部运营效率和合作有效性。本文主要分析了欧美网络保险的发展状况,并找出我国发展网络保险的差距。我国应该借鉴国外经验,结合国内有利环境,重点解决网络安全、风险控制和网上支付等技术瓶颈,全方位发展网络保险,以促进我国民族保险业的高效、快速发展,使之以全新的姿态积极参与国际保险市场的竞争。     

Medicaid and long‐term care: The effects of penalizing strategic asset transfers

Medicaid provides a critical source of insurance for long‐term care, and individuals may strategically offload assets (typically to children) to meet the means‐tested eligibility requirement. In this article, we quantify the extent of such behavior using variation in the penalty for improper parent‐to‐child transfers induced by the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005. We estimate difference‐in‐differences models based on the hypothesis that only individuals with high levels of nursing home risk (high risk) will alter transfers because of the Act. We find that over a 2‐year horizon, high‐risk individuals reduced transfers to children on the extensive margin by 11 percent and that the average total amount of transfers decreased by $4,860. The results hold only for coupled respondents. We also conduct a triple‐differences analysis to examine heterogeneity with financial literacy and find that even those with a low level of financial literacy responded to the penalty.     

The determinants of household risky asset holdings: Australian evidence on background risk and other factors

We study the portfolio allocation decisions of Australian households using the relatively new Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey. We focus on household allocations to risky financial assets. Our empirical analysis considers a range of hypothesised determinants of these allocations. We find background risk factors posed by labor income uncertainty and health risk are important. Credit constraints and observed risk preferences play the expected role. A positive age gradient is identified for risky asset holdings and home-ownership is associated with greater risky asset holdings. A unifying theme for many of our empirical findings is the important role played by financial awareness and knowledge in determining risky asset holdings. Many non-stockholding households appear to lack the experience and financial literacy that might enable them to benefit from direct investment in stocks.     

Applying Portfolio Change and Conditional Performance Measures: The Case of Industry Rotation via the Dynamic Investment Model

This paper applies portfolio change and conditional performance measures to assess the performance of the dynamic investment model in various industry-rotation settings spanning the 1934–1995 period. The dynamic investment model employs the empirical probability assessment approach in raw form. In addition, it incorporates three adjustments for estimation error: James–Stein, Bayes–Stein, and CAPM-based corrections. The tests are unanimous in their conclusion that the excess returns attained by the (unadjusted) historic, the Bayes–Stein, and the James–Stein estimators are (sometimes highly) statistically significant over the 1966–1995 and 1966–1981 sub-periods. This lends support to the idea that the joint empirical probability assessment approach based on the recent past, with and without Stein-based corrections for estimation error, contains information that can be profitably exploited. The relationship of these findings to the extant literature on momentum and contrarian strategies is addressed.     

Success of activity management practices: the influence of organizational and cultural factors

This study examines the success of activity management practices and the organizational and cultural factors affecting success at each of Gosselin's (1997) three levels of activity analysis (AA), activity cost analysis (ACA) and activity‐based costing (ABC). Data were collected by survey questionnaire from a random sample of managers of Australian business units. The results indicate that activity management is moderately successful in Australian organizations, with greater use associated with higher levels of success. Two organizational factors (top management support and link to quality) were associated with success at each of Gosselin's three levels, whereas training was associated at the AA and ACA levels. The cultural factor of outcome orientation was associated with success at each level, with attention to detail important at the ABC level. Organizational factors were more strongly associated with activity management success than cultural factors.     

Accountants and Empire: the case of co-membership of Australian and British accountancy bodies, 1885 to 1914

This study examines one aspect of the influence of the British Empire connection on the establishment of an accountancy profession in Australia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It does so by analysing data collected on the comembership of the numerous Australian and British accountancy bodies formed before 1914. It casts doubt on the conclusions of Johnson and Caygill (1971) regarding the predominance of accountants with British qualifications in the creation and growth of the Australian bodies and also elucidates the connection between the professionalization strategies of particular bodies and the membership choices of accountants in the context of imperialism.     

VaR模型及其在寿险公司风险管理中的应用

随着保险产品的创新、竞争的加剧及金融市场的发展,我国寿险公司面临的风险将更为复杂和多样,如何对这些风险进行有效管理是寿险公司面临的重要难题,而VaR模型作为当前国际金融风险管理和金融监管的主流方法,含有丰富的风险管理思想,故对VaR模型进行研究并探讨其在我国寿险公司风险管理中的应用具有一定的现实意义。本文分析了寿险公司应用VaR模型时需注意的问题,并指出我国寿险公司建立基于VaR的风险管理体系需在公司治理结构、风险管理组织架构、风险管理技术、风险数据库等方面加以完善。     

Type of earnings management and the effect of ownership structure, firm size, and corporate-governance practices: Evidence from Indonesia

The purpose of this study is to investigate whether companies listed on the Jakarta Stock Exchange (JSE) conduct efficient or opportunistic earnings management and to examine the effect of ownership structure, firm size, and corporate-governance practices on it.Using multiple regressions, we find evidence that the type of earnings management selected by JSE listed firms tends toward efficient earnings management. This evidence is inconsistent with the common view that earnings management in Indonesia is opportunistic. Family ownership has a significant influence on the type of earnings management selected. Firms with a high proportion of family ownership and non-business groups are more inclined to choose efficient earnings management than other types of firms. We find inconsistent evidence with regard to the impact of institutional ownership, firm size, and corporate-governance practices on type of earnings management.     

The use of earnings and operations management to avoid credit rating downgrades

Firms placed on negative credit watch face the threat of a credit rating downgrade. At the same time, they are given the opportunity to put recovery efforts in place to retain their current credit rating. In this paper, we test to what extent firms use earnings management as a short-term recovery strategy. We find that both accruals-based and real earnings management are associated with firms avoiding credit rating downgrades, and that these alternative earnings management strategies tend to be complements rather than substitutes. However, following the passage of the Sarbanes–Oxley Act, only real earnings management is significantly associated with the credit watch outcome. We find evidence that firms which maintain their rating via earnings management are better able to afford the inevitable earnings reversals, and that in the year following the credit watch period, the credit rating performance of these firms is significantly better than firms which undergo a downgrade, with fewer downgrades and more upgrades in this period. Our results also imply that credit rating agencies are not misled by earnings management but rather allow for some discretion in reporting earnings that facilitates the dissemination of private information about future firm performance.     

The life and career of John Spence Ogilvy (1805-71), the first chartered accountant to emigrate to Australia

So far as the available evidence allows, this paper examines the life and career of John Spence Ogilvy, foundation member of the Society of Accountants in Edinburgh in 1854, who emigrated to Melbourne in 1856, but did not play a part in the development of an organized accounting profession in Australia. The paper also attempts to explain the gap of thirty-two years between the formation of the first accounting bodies in Edinburgh and Melbourne.