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.     

中国合资寿险公司股权更迭的原因及影响

股权更迭是近两年我国合资寿险公司出现的新问题.目前合资寿险公司的股权更迭表现出四方面的明显特征.合资寿险公司的股权更迭是两方面原因相互交织的结果:一是经营业绩低于股东的最初预期,二是中外股东之间存在着内部冲突.股权更迭不只是简单地改变了合资寿险公司的股权结构,它给合资寿险公司的经营理念带来了冲击,而且还影响着寿险行业的生态环境.     

Australia's Implicit Deposit Insurance — Should It Be Reconsidered?

Most major developed countries have bank deposit insurance; the European Parliament recently mandated it for all member countries. One of the characteristics of most deposit insurance schemes to protect depositors is that the banking industry funds the scheme through assessments. Interestingly, Australia does not have explicit deposit insurance and to date there has been little public debate on this subject. This paper proposes that such a debate should be initiated.     

Dividend policy and the global financial crisis: empirical evidence from the Italian insurance industry

The financial crisis has led to controversial discussions about the capital base of the insurance industry. Dividend cuts and capital increases have been suggested to counter diminishing equity. However, some observers seem to fear that investors could interpret a reduction of dividends as a sign for future problems. The empirical evidence from the Italian insurance sector reported here does indeed indicate that dividend smoothing is a relevant economic phenomenon. Therefore, Italian insurance companies should rethink dividend policy rather carefully due to the possible negative consequences of dividend cuts.     

大数据背景下的寿险产品定价与创新

本文主要探讨大数据对保险业的影响,并以实例说明在大数据背景下传统寿险产品定价的改进以及新型保险产品的开发情况。首先基于实际数据对于保险业大数据现状进行了统计分析,给出了保险业数据量现状以及数据使用效率的统计结果;其次以实际大数据量为基础,对传统的寿险产品定价进行了改进,获得了更优的市场比较优势;最后,以大数据量为基础,打破传统寿险产品的思维定式,开发出新型的保险产品并对产品风险进行了精确测定。     

Strategisches Asset-Liability Management in der Versicherungswirtschaft — Ein Ansatz zur integrierten Bilanzstrukturoptimierung

Asset-Liability Management has gained increased significance within the German insurance industry. This was mainly driven by recent capital market developments. In fact, insurers have encountered challenges to earn given interest guarantees. Regulatory changes also require more sophisticated ALM-tools. Solvency II will change the underlying paradigm and shift balance sheets perception towards a market value oriented view. Especially liabilities will have to be accounted for using the fair value approach. Most ALM-tools appear to be unable to cope with these demands. To improve this current practice, in this paper a Markowitz-approach is employed in order to generate an integrated method for the optimization of assets and liabilities in the life insurance industry. This technique aims to link new regulatory requirements to the latest capital market theory and therefore delivers a procedure for an integrated asset allocation policy in the insurance industry.     

Economic, Demographic, and Institutional Determinants of Life Insurance Consumption across Countries

Life insurance has become an increasingly important part ofthe financial sector over the past 40 years, providing a rangeof financial services for consumers and becoming a major sourceof investment in the capital market. But what drives the largevariation in life insurance consumption across countries remainsunclear. Using a panel with data aggregated at different frequenciesfor 68 economies in 1961–2000, this article finds thateconomic indicators—such as inflation, income per capita,and banking sector development—and religious and institutionalindicators are the most robust predictors of the use of lifeinsurance. Education, life expectancy, the young dependencyratio, and the size of the social security system appear tohave no robust association with life insurance consumption.The results highlight the importance of price stability andbanking sector development in fully realizing the savings andinvestment functions of life insurance in an economy.     

巨灾风险管理中金融创新品种研究综述

创新是保险业发展的永恒主题,而保险风险管理技术的提升则是保险业可持续发展能力的重要象征。近年来,伴随着金融工程技术的推广,各类金融创新产品在保险业尤其是巨灾保险和寿险风险管理中得到了广泛应用,相关研究涉及品种介绍、效用评价、定价技术以及运作机制等诸多方面。     

经济周期视野下的中国寿险业发展态势探析

运用宏观经济学的研究方法,从经济周期视野对我国寿险业的发展态势进行了探讨。首先,对寿险业发展的宏观脉络进行了分析,认为寿险业的产品特征具有较强的亲周期性,通过HP滤波进行趋势周期分解后证实寿险业的周期性波动幅度比产险业显著。其次,对寿险业发展的当前态势进行了分析,维持了寿险业长期趋势向好的总体判断,但认为经济周期对寿险业的负面冲击效应较大,短期内寿险业难以恢复高增长态势。最后,对寿险业的发展提出了若干政策建议,认为准确定位、改善监管和优化环境是促进寿险业可持续发展的当务之急。     

German bond markets and US monetary policy

Low interest rates have been a major problem for the European life insurance industry. The implementation of Solvency II certainly has forced European life insurers to improve their risk management procedures and to buy long term bonds in order to handle the interest rate risk inherent to their liabilities. As a consequence, the industry meanwhile more or less seems to be able to cope with the problem of low interest rates. However, now the US central bank has started to hike rates. The Bank of Canada meanwhile has followed its southern neighbor. The changed monetary policy environment in North America might create new challenges for asset managers in the European life insurance industry. This paper provides some additional thoughts and empirical evidence about the linkages between US monetary policy and the European bond market employing techniques of time series analysis.     

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。     

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 Price Elasticity of Demand for Whole Life Insurance

In this study a real price index is created for whole life insurance sold in the United States from 1953 to 1979. New purchases of whole life insurance are shown to be negatively related to changes in this cost index, contrary to what has been widely accepted in the insurance literature, but consistent with economic theory. The existence of strong price elasticity of demand for whole life insurance does not ensure, however, that the insurance industry manifests a high degree of price competition.     

The Relationship Between Insurance and Economic Development: 85 Empirical Papers for a Review of the Literature

The objective of this article is to propose a review of 85 empirical papers examining the relationships between insurance and economic development, that is, the insurance‐growth nexus. When looking at the economic importance of the insurance sector, most papers in the past have looked at the demand side (the level of economic development is an explanatory variable among other factors that affect the demand for insurance). Because the role of the insurance sector and its contribution to development is at the agenda of international organizations and because the importance of the relationship between financial development and economic growth has been well recognized and emphasized in the field of economic development, more recent papers have examined the causality links between insurance and economic development and the role of insurance as a significant determinant in the process of economic growth.     

保险业对经济增长影响的实证分析——基于修正的Solow模型

保险业对于经济增长和社会稳定的作用已得到广泛认同。本文通过估计若干衡量生产效率的指标,以检验财产保险和人身保险在中国经济增长中发挥的作用。文中选用1994年～2007年国内的14组数据来建立我国的经济增长模型,发现在控制了教育、贸易出口、财政支出和投资增长率等变量后,财产保险深度对经济增长具有显著的正面影响,而人身保险深度的影响却不显著。该实证分析结果还表明,与保险和银行的独立影响相比,保险深度和银行贷款占比对经济增长的联合影响更为显著。     

我国人身保险市场结构变化与预测分析

虽然保险业经受了本次金融危机的考验,但是保险业可能成为系统性风险传导链条上的一环,因此,保险监管机构需要转变审慎监管方式,建立适合保险业的宏观审慎监管框架。在这个背景下,对中国人身保险市场结构现状有一个较为清晰和准确的认识就显得十分必要。研究发现:从全国范围来说,我国寿险市场主体数量较少,人身险市场集中度过高,市场结构为寡头垄断,但各地区的人身险市场结构又各有特点,经济发达地区人身险保险市场结构已经过渡到垄断竞争阶段。根据成分数据预测结果分析,在"十二五"期间,我国人身险的市场集中度继续呈下降趋势。     

The stages of financial services product elimination

This paper examines product elimination in the UK's financial services industry. The literature review establishes that physical goods elimination theory has only limited application to the financial services sector. Specifically, it fails to take account of constraints that prevent the removal of a product to a state of nonexistence. To overcome this, the sector uses two forms of removal — full and partial elimination. A three-stage methodology is used to find out how products are eliminated in retail banks, building societies and insurance organisations. A model is developed which explains that companies within the sector proceed through four stages during the elimination process — identification, decision, implementation and post elimination evaluation. At the end of this process, a product will have been either partially or fully eliminated. The preference of the industry is to use partial elimination. It can be concluded that the customer relationship is a key determinate factor in the choice of elimination process.     

Insurance and economic policy uncertainty

Just as the world has witnessed the increased importance of the insurance sector over the past few decades, it has also witnessed a sharp rise in risks and uncertainties. Surprisingly, studies analyzing the relationship between economic policy uncertainty and the insurance sector are almost non-existent. Another major limitation of insurance literature is the choice of methodology. Most studies on the insurance sector do not take into consideration issues of heterogeneity and cross-sectional dependence, and are therefore subject to errors. To address the identified gaps, this research investigates the impact of economic policy uncertainty on insurance premiums in a panel of 15 countries over the period 1998–2016 by employing heterogeneous panel estimation techniques with cross-sectional dependence. The Durbin-Hausman cointegration tests of Westerlund (2008) confirm that a long-run relationship exists between the variables. Findings from the error correction based panel estimations show that the insurance sector is not immune to the effects of economic policy uncertainty. Economic policy uncertainty raises insurance premiums both in the short and long run, although the long-run impact is greater than the short-run impact. In addition, economic policy uncertainty exerts a bigger influence on non-life insurance premium than on life insurance premium, indicating that the economic risks covered by non-life insurance are more sensitive to uncertainty than the mortality and longevity risks covered by life insurance. Our findings further show that national income, education, population, financial development and institutional quality all raise insurance premiums, while inflation lowers insurance premiums.     

Die Haftpflichtversicherung nach der VVG-Reform

The reform of the German Insurance Contract Act (Versicherungsvertragsgesetz, ?VVG“) also targets key aspects of third-party liability insurance. The changes go beyond the findings made by both the courts and legal authorities to date.Compulsory insurance aside, the law still provides that an injured third party has no standing to assert a claim directly against the tortfeasor’s liability insurer. The tortfeasor may assign its indemnity claim against the insurer solely to the injured third party and may no longer be precluded from doing so under the General Insurance Conditions (AVB). Consequently, the tortfeasor’s indemnity claim against the insurer effectively becomes a pecuniary claim. This is criticised by the insurance industry particularly with regard to eliminating the prohibition against acknowledgment and satisfaction of claims.In the future, third parties will be able to assert claims directly against the tortfeasor’s insurer and this will be the case for compulsory insurance across the board. Provisions currently in effect in the motor vehicle liability insurance industry will be carried over to the entire compulsory insurance sector. Compulsory insurance does permit agreements involving self-deductibles. However, such agreements are generally effective only as between the insurer and the tortfeasor inter se, i.e. they are not effective as against third parties — in contrast to valid disclaimers of risk.Another change in compulsory insurance is the hierarchy of claims for compensatory damages and relief in the event the insured amount is inadequate. Specifically, the hierarchy gives preference to individual claims of injured parties which are not otherwise covered, such as claims for pain and suffering.The prohibition against the retroactive loss of provisional coverage for failure to pay the first premium, which had been criticised primarily by motor vehicle liability insurers, has been omitted in the Government bill.     

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.