Efficiency of insurance firms with endogenous risk management and financial intermediation activities

Risk management is now present in many economic sectors. However, none of existing studies consider risk management as a potential determinant of firm performance. In this paper, we investigate the role of risk management and financial intermediation in creating value for financial institutions by analyzing U.S. property-liability insurers. Our main goal is to test how risk management and financial intermediation activities create value for insurers by enhancing economic efficiency through cost reductions. We consider these two activities as intermediate outputs and estimate their shadow prices. Insurer cost efficiency is measured using an econometric cost function. The econometric results show that both activities significantly increase the efficiency of the property-liability insurance industry.     

保险业发展与经济增长的多重均衡

本文在拉姆齐—卡斯—库普曼斯框架下构建了保险业发展影响经济增长的理论模型,模型显示保险业发展与经济增长之间存在门槛效应和多重均衡现象,在保险业发达情形下,经济增长和保险业发展相互促进,保险业不发达情形中经济增长存在低水平陷阱。在理论分析的基础上,以寿险业为例,运用中国各省市1999~2010年的面板数据,通过面板数据门槛回归估计的结果显示：寿险业发展可以促进经济增长;随着人均GDP和保险密度进入更高的区制,寿险业发展对经济增长的促进作用显著提高;当相对寿险深度跨越更高的门槛值后,寿险业促进经济增长的程度降低。     

Cost efficiency and value driver analysis of insurers in an emerging economy

This study investigated cost inefficiencies and its relationship with value drivers of insurers in United Arab Emirates (UAE). The study revealed that there were 21–33% cost inefficiencies in these insurers under different model specifications of stochastic frontier and DEA; value drivers such as lower leverage risk, lower capital risk significantly improved cost efficiencies consistent with Basel II norms; ROE positively influenced cost efficiencies with further trade off between increased profit margin, decreased asset utilization and/or reduced equity multiplier by the insurer managements to achieve a target‐ROE; and the trend of cost efficiency was improving during 2000–2004. The study suggests that stock insurers could overcome their cost inefficiencies through adoption of efficient measures such as risk mapping of clients, risk prioritization besides ALM techniques. The study has direct implications for individual and institutional investors in making their portfolio investment decisions in insurance sector, policymakers, and regulators to closely monitor inefficient insurers consistent with Basel II norms. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The evolution and determinants of Chinese property insurance companies’ profitability: A DEA-based perspective

The property insurance industry grows fast in China and it is necessary to further investigate the profitability of the Chinese property insurance industry. This study investigates the evolution and determinants of the profitability of 53 Chinese property insurers during the year 2013–2017. Profitability is measured by profit ratio efficiency by data envelopment analysis (DEA) methodology and a profit ratio change index is applied to compare the performance of these insurers over different periods. Tobit regression models are used to investigate several influencing factors of profitability. The empirical results show the importance of proper arrangement of costs and revenues for an insurer and help to better understand the effect of firm size, age, and product specification on profitability. Some policy implications and suggestions are also proposed.     

The impact of oil prices and the financial market on cost efficiency in the insurance and Takaful sectors: Evidence from a stochastic frontier analysis

The Gulf Cooperation Council’s (GCC) insurance industry, including conventional insurance and Takaful, has witnessed remarkable growth during the last decade. However, the economies of this region rely on oil as the primary stream of revenue and lack development in financial markets. This could affect the insurance industry. For this reason, this paper examines the impact of oil prices and the financial market on the cost efficiency of the insurance and Takaful sectors in GCC countries using a stochastic frontier cost function with data from 2009–2016. The results show that the relationship between oil prices and efficiency changes from positive to negative when the prices increase, whereas the relationship between the financial market and efficiency is negative. No clear evidence of the impact of oil prices on efficiency arises from the differences between conventional insurance and Takaful. However, there are differences regarding the financial market, with a negative impact on conventional insurance and a positive one on the Takaful business. The results of this study have implications for regulators and management. The Takaful industry is rapidly growing compared to conventional insurance in the GCC and, therefore, the financial market may have added benefits for the GCC region. However, caution is required in relation to the impact of the financial market on conventional insurance. Furthermore, management may require the development of strategies to deal with the nature of GCC economies to avoid shocks to oil prices.     

A decomposition analysis of managerial efficiency for the insurance companies: A data envelopment analysis approach

The insurance industry worldwide has become less fragmented through liberalization reforms. Yet, following the transformational changes, there is little empirical evidence on identifying the determinants of managerial efficiency. This paper employs a truncated regression analysis to determine the factors driving managerial efficiency of Malaysian insurers. Overall and divisional efficiencies are derived using data envelopment analysis. The decomposition analysis reveals that the observed inefficiency is mainly caused by investment capability division. The regression findings reveal that determinants of efficiency have dissimilar impacts on overall and divisional efficiencies. This study broadly supports financial liberalization as a means of promoting managerial efficiency.     

Forecasting automobile insurance paid claim costs using econometric and ARIMA models

Automobile insurance companies in the United States currently utilize simple exponential trend models to forecast paid claim costs, an important variable in ratemaking. This paper tests the performance of econometric and ARIMA models, as well as the current insurance industry method, in forecasting two paid claim cost series. The experiments encompass eight forecast periods ranging from 1974 through early 1983. The results indicate that automobile insurers could significantly improve their forecasts of property damage liability claim costs by adopting econometric models. For bodily injury liability claim costs, the accuracy of the econometric and insurance industry methods is approximately the same, and both outperform the ARIMA models. Overall, a net gain in accuracy could be achieved by adopting econometric models.     

Firm-specific,industry-specific and macroeconomic factors of life insurers’ profitability: Evidence from Canada

The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of firm-specific, industry-specific and macroeconomic factors on the performance of life insurance firms. This study focuses on the Canadian life insurance sector, which is the second largest and oldest financial services sector in Canada. Using an empirical framework that incorporates both fixed and dynamic panel models that control for endogeneity issues, this research finds that size, liquidity, and risk exposure of life insurers are significant factors in their profitability. Secondly, industry concentration (e.g., HHI) fail to provide any meaningful evidence to support the structure-conduct-performance (SCP) theory in the static panel models, but in the dynamic models, industry concentration tends to have negative impacts on profitability. Macroeconomic factors such as real GDP growth and equity market returns are found to be significant determinants of insurers’ profitability. Finally, the persistence of profits for life insurers’ seems to lag that of their financial services counterparts (e.g., banks).     

Efficiency and productivity in the Thai non-life insurance industry

This paper estimates a stochastic cost frontier for a sample of the non-life insurance industry in Thailand from 2000 to 2007. Our model explicitly considers the heteroscedasticity in the variances of the noise and inefficiency components that could affect the position of the cost frontier as well as the measurement of efficiency. Tests for double heteroscedasticity and appropriate specification for the cost frontier are performed. The chosen model is used to examine whether economies of scale and a change in technology exist. In addition, this paper calculates total factor productivity (TFP) change and decomposes it into scale effect, cost efficiency effect, technology effect, output effect, price effect, and environmental effect. Our results reveal that, on average, Thai non-life insurance firms are between 74 and 79 % efficient, that economies of scale exist, and that regress in technology shifts the cost frontier upward by 2.2 %. The regress in technology is the dominant contributor to a negative TFP growth of 1.15 %. The restructuring of the industry following the 1997 Asian financial crisis finally paid off when the industry experienced technology progress in 2005 and beyond. Between 2005 and 2007, technology progress and productivity growth occurred at a little over 2 % a year. In-depth analysis of the most and the least efficient firms reveals that most efficient firms tend to strategically select types of insurance services and underwrite average and small size sum insured per policy to diversify their risks. In addition, they tend to be savvy investors. The opposite holds for the least efficient firms which concentrate in providing labor-intensive, small sum automobile insurance policies or underwrite large coverage policies for fewer policyholders. Balancing the mix of insurance types, spreading risk across insurance types or across number of policyholders, investing in high yield assets, or developing a market niche may prove beneficial for improving cost efficiency.     

Profitability and Efficiency in the U.S. Life Insurance Industry

This study explores the relationship between cost inefficiency and profitability in the U.S. life insurance industry. Earnings have particular importance to life insurance companies because earnings and capital determine the viability of the insurer. Since the life insurance industry is mature and highly competitive, cost efficiency may be the main driver of profitability. We derive cost efficiency using the stochastic frontier (SF) method allowing the mean inefficiency to vary with organizational form and the outputs. In addition, the estimation of the cost efficiency measure takes into account the underlying accounting concepts that generate the data and, consequently, the product mix (long-duration policies vs. short-duration policies) to avoid distorted estimates. Our results suggest that cost inefficiency in the life insurance industry is substantial relative to earnings, and that inefficiency is negatively associated with profitability measures such as the return on equity. The analysis of inefficiency and organizational form suggest that stock (shareholder-owned) companies are as efficient and profitable as mutual (policyholder-owned) companies.     

The value of implementing enterprise risk management: Evidence from Taiwan’s financial industry

The primary purpose of this study is to examine whether companies in Taiwan’s financial industry benefit from enterprise risk management (ERM) adoption and how much value ERM activity creates. Our result indicates that a financial company implementing ERM benefits by adding 5.37% value compared to non-users. ERM adoption also significantly helps a company improve its revenue and cost efficiencies by 9.22% and 16.34%, respectively. Subsector analysis of the financial industry shows that banks and property/liability (P/L) insurers adopting ERM generate more benefits in cost savings and revenue efficiency.     

保险公司治理特殊性分析——三家上市保险公司的案例研究

保险公司治理不同于一般上市公司治理,不是公司治理理论在保险业的简单应用,而是治理理论与保险行业特殊性的有机结合。本文基于三家A股上市保险公司案例,以保险公司经营的特殊性为逻辑起点,深入剖析了保险公司各治理要素的特殊性,建立了涵盖治理目标、治理原则、治理结构与机制、治理风险、治理评价和治理监管等要素的保险公司治理特殊性分析逻辑框架,提出保险公司治理的首要目标是解决股东和债权人之间的委托代理问题,而非经典的股东管理者以及大小股东问的委托代理问题。     

保险资金投资分析

近年来,我国保险业发展迅速,保险公司的保费收入与总资产快速增长。随着我国经济的持续快速发展,我国保险业表现出了非常好的发展前景。但是,作为保险公司“两个轮子”之一的保险投资业务却面临着投资结构不合理、投资渠道狭窄和保险资金管理模式落后等一系列问题。本文在我国当前经济形势与政策条件下就如何提高保险资金的运用效率,降低保险资金的风险,促进保险业的健康、稳定发展,提出一些建议与对策。     

A cost efficiency analysis of the insurance industry in Mexico

In Mexico, the low participation of insurance activity in national production, in contrast to similar Latin American economies, is a concern. Industry’s regulator promoted more intense competition at the dawn of the century. Was deregulation followed by improvements in the financial and economic performance of Mexican insurance firms? The purpose of this paper is to answer this question through a comprehensive analysis of cost variations in an intertemporal manner, by breaking them down into the economic sources that produce them, including productivity. Cost frontier estimation was grounded in a joint production technology of desirable and undesirable outputs, modeled in an input-oriented fashion. Our results demonstrate that even though some companies achieved cost reductions from technological progress or improvements in efficiency, the Mexican insurance market does not show signs of significant productivity gains.     

Can the interests of shareholders explain industry attitudes toward banking-insurance mergers?

The banking industry generally supports and the insurance industry generally opposes the removal of regulatory boundaries between the two industries. In an effort to explain these industry attitudes, this article examines the effect, in the absence of synergies, of hypothetical mergers of banks and insurance companies on shareholders' risk and return. The results suggest that, if cash flows are not impacted by the mergers, the attitudes of industry management toward inter-industry mergers cannot be motivated by concerns for shareholder risk and return since, during the data period considered, insurer shareholders would have gained more by acquiring banks than bank shareholders would have gained from acquiring insurers.     

Productivity growth and regulation of P/L insurance: 1980–1984

Measurement of productivity growth in a regulated industry is confounded by the effects of regulation on costs. Property-liability insurers are subject to premium regulation in some states; regulatory capacity constraints which limit output growth exist also. This research examines productivity growth for property-liability insurers and the interaction of their productivity growth with regulation. To control for regulatory effects, the Averch-Johnson model is generalized to apply to insurance. Statistical tests on a sample of 100 of the largest property-liability insurers support the hypothesis that regulatory requirements for these insurers resulted in higher rates in rate regulated states. Overall, productivity growth increased slightly over the sample period.The refereeing process of this paper was handled through E.F. Sudit.     

Estimating banking cost efficiency with the consideration of cost management

This study re-investigates the bank cost efficiency by a combination of two strands of literature. The first strand is related to bank cost efficiency; the other is related to earnings management. Employing the findings reported in bank earnings management literature, this study argues that bank observed total cost (“accounting cost”) may be the biased estimator of the true total cost. Using the biased total cost may thus yield incorrect inferences from estimating bank cost efficiency. We propose a method to modify accounting cost, which is referred to as “economic cost”, to be consistent with the economic theory; that is, one that is free of cost management. Both accounting and economic costs are then adopted to analyze the efficiency of 29 commercial banks in Taiwan banking industry. Our results show that estimated efficiency, with the application of economic cost, offers results that are more reasonable results than those of the accounting cost.     

论保险市场交易成本的构成及控制方法

文章通过引入保险交易成本概念,分析了在现行市场条件下,影响我国保险交易成本变动的因素,提出了保险业控制市场交易成本的途径。在交易成本为正的保险市场上,控制和降低交易成本不仅具有改善保险公司经营绩效的意义,而且对探索保险业发展规律具有特殊意义。     

广东物流产业的经济影响分析

广东经济转型势在必行,发展物流业是促进产业升级和推动经济发展的重要措施。本文利用广东省2002、2007年投入产出表,从关联效应、波及效应和结构效益三个方面分析了广东物流业的经济影响,提出要重视物流业的基础地位、扩大社会物流需求、优先发展国际物流、促进物流业与第二产业及整体经济的协调发展的政策建议。     

关于首都金融业发展策略的思考

本文着眼于提高首都整体金融发展的水平,从地区经济和金融发展的角度出发,研究分析首都金融业(包括银行、证券、保险、信托)的发展趋势及策略。文章指出,政府因势利导、宏观和谐管控,充分发挥地区金融的竞争优势,提高金融微观主体的核心竞争力,是提高首都金融业整体发展水平和金融效率,增强国际竞争力的有效途径。