Estimating the Cost of Equity Capital for Property-Liability Insurers

This article presents new evidence on the cost of equity capital by line of insurance for the property‐liability insurance industry. To do so we obtain firm beta estimates and then use the full‐information industry beta (FIB) methodology to decompose the cost of capital by line. We obtain full‐information beta estimates using the standard one‐factor capital asset pricing model and extend the FIB methodology to incorporate the Fama–French three‐factor cost of capital model. The analysis suggests the cost of capital for insurers using the Fama–French model is significantly higher than the estimates based upon the CAPM. In addition, we find evidence of significant differences in the cost of equity capital across lines.     

跨地上市公司具有较低的权益资本成本吗?——基于“法与金融”的视角

根据法与金融理论,严格的投资者保护制度有助于降低公司的权益资本成本,本文以赴中国香港跨地上市后返回中国大陆发行A股的公司为研究对象,检验其是否因受制于更为严格的投资者保护制度而具有较低的权益资本成本。研究结果表明,在A股市场上,赴港跨地上市公司比其他公司的权益资本成本更低,跨地上市对权益资本成本具有降低作用,且这种降低作用与香港较为严格的投资者保护制度有关。     

Fuzzy Financial Pricing of Property-Liability Insurance

Abstract

This paper uses fuzzy set theory (FST) to solve a problem in actuarial science, the financial pricing of property-liability insurance contracts. The fundamental concept of FST is the alternative formalization of membership in a set to include the degree or strength of membership. FST provides consistent mathematical rules for incorporating vague, subjective, or judgmental information into complex decision processes. It is potentially important in insurance pricing because much of the information about cash flows, future economic conditions, risk premiums, and other factors affecting the pricing decision is subjective and thus difficult to quantify by using conventional methods. To illustrate the use of FST, we “fuzzify” a well-known insurance financial pricing model, provide numerical examples of fuzzy pricing, and propose rules for project decision-making using FST. The results indicate that FST can lead to significantly different decisions than the conventional approach.     

The Determination of Fair Profits for the Property-Liability Insurance Firm

Single period and dynamic valuation models in continuous time, under certainty and uncertainty, are developed for a property-liability insurance contract to determine the “fair” (competitive) premium and underwriting profit. The intertemporal stochastic model assumes that the claim frequency and the price index of claim settlements are functions of a set of underlying state variables which follow a multivariate Wiener process. The competitive premium is shown to be proportional to the claim frequency and the price index for claim settlements at the time the policy is issued. The factor of proportionality varies directly with the claim settlement rate and the length of coverage, and inversely with the risk-adjusted real interest rate on the dollar-valued claim rate.     

Capitalization of the Property-Liability Insurance Industry: Overview

The 1990s witnessed an unprecedented decline in leverage ratios in the United States property-liability insurance industry. The premiums-to-surplus ratio, the most commonly used leverage ratio in the industry, fell from its historical average of 2.0 to less than 1.0 by the end of 2000; and the industry-wide capital-to-asset ratio increased from an historical average of about 25% to 35%. The international reinsurance industry also experienced significant capital increases and leverage declines during the 1990s (Cummins and Weiss, 2000).¹ These unusual trends raised widespread concerns that the property-liability insurance industry had become over-capitalized (The Economist, 1999; Bowers, 2001; Seifert, 2001). To investigate the growth in capitalization and its potential causes, the Conference on Capitalization in the Property-Liability Insurance Industry was held at the Wharton School in September 2000 under the joint sponsorship of the Wharton Financial Institutions Center and AON. Selected papers from the conference comprise this issue of the Journal of Financial Services Research (JFSR).     

Political Cost Incentives for Managing the Property-Liability Insurer Loss Reserve

This paper examines the effect of rate regulation on the management of the property-liability insurer loss reserve. The political cost hypothesis predicts that managers make accounting choices to reduce wealth transfers resulting from the regulatory process. Managers may under-state reserves to justify lower rates to regulators. Alternatively, managers may have an incentive to report loss inflating discretionary reserves to reduce the cost of regulatory rate suppression. We find insurers over-state reserves in the presence of stringent rate regulation. Investigating the impact along the conditional reserve error distribution, we discover that a majority of the response occurs from under-reserving firms under-reserving less because of stringent rate regulation.     

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     

Alternative Models for Estimating the Cost of Equity Capital for Property/Casualty Insurers

This paper estimates the cost of equity capital for Property/Casualty insurers by applying three alternative asset pricing models: the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM), the Arbitrage Pricing Theory (APT), and a unified CAPM/APT model (Wei (1988). The in-sample forecast ability of the models is evaluated by applying the mean squared error method, the Theil U2 (1966) statistic, and the Granger and Newbold (1978) conditional efficiency evaluation. Based on forecast evaluation procedures, the APT and Wei's unified CAPM/APT models perform better than the CAPM in estimating the cost of equity capital for the PC insurers and a combined forecast may outperform the individual forecasts.     

上市公司股权资本成本影响因素分析——以河南省9家公司为例

以河南省9家上市公司的具体情况为例,在MM模型与资本资产定价模型的基础上,对影响股权资本成本的各种因素进行理论研究;并通过建立回归模型,进行单因素与多因素分析,研究哪些因素对股权资本成本的影响较为稳定与深远。具体来说,主要包括三个方面的内容:一是分析研究河南省上市公司资本成本的现状;二是对各影响因素归类,并进行理论与实证分析;三是在研究结论的基础上,从降低企业股权资本成本的角度出发,提出如下相应对策:扩大公司规模、降低企业风险、提高股票流动性与经营能力等,以降低股票资本成本。     

Price Regulation in Property-Liability Insurance: A Contingent-Claims Approach

A discrete-time option-pricing model is used to derive the “fair” rate of return for the property-liability insurance firm. The rationale for the use of this model is that the financial claims of shareholders, policyholders, and tax authorities can be modeled as European options written on the income generated by the insurer's asset portfolio. This portfolio consists mostly of traded financial assets and is therefore relatively easy to value. By setting the value of the shareholders' option equal to the initial surplus, an implicit solution for the fair insurance price may be derived. Unlike previous insurance regulatory models, this approach addresses the ruin probability of the insurer, as well as nonlinear tax effects.     

我国上市公司资本结构影响股权代理成本的实证分析

公司资本结构是公司治理结构的重要方面,它对公司代理成本有着直接的影响。本文对1990—2003年上市公司资本结构影响股权代理成本的实证分析表明,经营者持股比例与股权代理成本呈显著负相关;负债融资比例、法人股比例和第一大股东持股比例与股权代理成本呈不显著负相关;国家股比例和流通股比例与股权代理成本呈较显著正相关。这些研究结论表明,资本结构对股东、经营者和债权人之间的契约关系有着直接的影响,完善资本结构是完善我国上市公司治理结构从而降低代理成本的重要途径之一。     

Home Equity Insurance

Home equity insurance policies—policies insuring homeowners against declines in the prices of their homes—would bear some resemblance both to ordinary insurance and to financial hedging vehicles. A menu of choices for the design of such policies is presented here, and conceptual issues are discussed. Choices include pass-through futures and options, in which the insurance company in effect serves as a retailer to homeowners of short positions in real estate futures markets or of put options on real estate indices. Another choice is a life-event-triggered insurance policy, in which the homeowner pays regular fixed insurance premia and is entitled to a claim if both a sufficient decline in the real estate price index and a specified life event (such as a move beyond a certain geographical distance) occur. Pricing of the premia to cover loss experience is derived, and tables of break-even policy premia are shown, based on estimated models of Los Angeles housing prices from 1971 to 1994.     

Optimal Capital Utilization by Financial Firms: Evidence from the Property-Liability Insurance Industry

Capitalization levels in the property-liability insurance industry have increased dramatically in recent years—the capital-to-assets ratio rose from 25% in 1989 to 35% by 1999. This paper investigates the use of capital by insurers to provide evidence on whether the capital increase represents a legitimate response to changing market conditions or a true inefficiency that leads to performance penalties for insurers. We estimate best practice technical, cost, and revenue frontiers for a sample of insurers over the period 1993–1998, using data envelopment analysis, a non-parametric technique. The results indicate that most insurers significantly over-utilized equity capital during the sample period. Regression analysis provides evidence that capital over-utilization primarily represents an inefficiency for which insurers incur significant revenue penalties.     

Using a Modified DuPont System of Analysis for Understanding Property-Liability Insurance Company Financial Performance

ABSTRACT: The DuPont system of equations has been used for many years when performing financial analysis on corporate financial statements. It has not been used, however, for analyzing property-liability insurance company performance. This article shows that, with minor modifications, the DuPont system can be applied to the analysis of property-liability insurance companies. It aids in understanding the relationship between underwriting operations and investment results and illuminates the role played by the interaction of assets, premiums, and surplus. The author hopes that the modified DuPont system presented in the article can become a standard for performing financial analysis of property-liability insurance companies.     

Evaluating Liquidation Strategies for Insurance Companies

In this article, we examine liquidation strategies and asset allocation decisions for property and casualty insurance companies for different insurance product lines. We propose a cash‐flow‐based liquidation model of an insurance company and analyze selling strategies for a portfolio with liquid and illiquid assets. Within this framework, we study the influence of different bid‐ask spread models on the minimum capital requirement and determine a solution set consisting of an optimal initial asset allocation and an optimal liquidation strategy. We show that the initial asset allocation, in conjunction with the appropriate liquidation strategy, is an important tool in minimizing the capital committed to cover claims for a predetermined ruin probability. This interdependence is of importance to insurance companies, stakeholders, and regulators.     

Interest Rate Risk and Equity Values of Life Insurance Companies: A GARCH–M Model

The importance of managerial decisions related to interest‐sensitive cash flows has received considerable attention in the insurance literature. Consistent with the interest‐sensitive nature of insurer assets and liabilities, empirical research has shown that insurer insolvency is significantly related to interest rate volatility. We investigate the interest rate sensitivity of monthly stock returns of life insurers based on a generalized autoregressive conditionally heteroskedastic in the mean (GARCH–M) model. We examine three different portfolios (equally weighted, risk‐based, and size‐based) with binary variables to explicitly account for varying interest rate strategies adopted by the Federal Reserve System. Results based on data for the period 1975 through 2000 indicate that life insurer equity values are sensitive to long‐term interest rates and that interest sensitivity varies across subperiods and across risk‐based and size‐based portfolios. The results complement insolvency research that links insurer financial performance to changes in interest rates.     

保险资金股权投资新机遇

股权投资是保险资金运用的重要方式,对于保险资金提升长期收益水平、控制组合波动风险发挥重要作用.本文探讨了新形势下保险资金运用环境的变化,提出保险资金开展股权投资的四大机遇,并对保险资金开展股权投资提出若干建议.本文认为,在经济转向高质量发展、实现碳中和成为中长期主题、长期低利率环境可能延续、我国迎来股权融资时代的背景下...     

媒体报道对权益成本和债务成本的影响及其差异——来自中国上市公司的经验证据

近年来,媒体的公司治理作用引起了越来越多的研究关注。本文以资本成本为着眼点,利用中国沪深A股上市公司2006-2008年的面板数据实证分析了媒体报道水平对降低公司权益成本和债务成本的积极作用。研究结果发现,媒体报道能够显著降低中国上市公司的权益成本和债务成本,即上市公司受到媒体的报道越多,其股权融资或债务融资所需支付的成本就越低。而且,本文进一步发现,媒体报道对上市公司权益成本的影响要显著大于对债务成本的影响。     

公司声誉、审计师声誉与权益资本成本——基于中国民营上市公司的经验证据

以2009~2013年中国沪深两市 A 股民营上市公司为样本,实证检验审计师声誉、公司声誉与权益资本成本的关系。研究发现：限制其他条件,审计师声誉、公司声誉分别与公司权益资本成本呈显著负相关。进一步研究发现,随着公司自身声誉的逐步建立,审计师声誉对于公司权益资本成本的影响将会逐渐减弱,公司声誉对于审计师声誉具有替代作用。