Deregulation and widespread economic changes have fundamentally affected the business conditions of European life insurance companies over the last decades. In this paper, we apply multi-stage Data Envelopment Analysis to identify the impact of the changing environment on productivity and efficiency. Considering a sample of 960 life insurance companies from 14 European countries we show that in...

This paper describes common features in data sets from motor vehicle insurance companies and proposes a general approach which exploits knowledge of such features in order to model high-dimensional data sets with a complex dependency structure. The results of the approach can be a basis to develop insurance tariffs. The approach is applied to a collection of data sets from several motor vehicle...

We propose several econometric measures of systemic risk to capture the interconnectedness among the monthly returns of hedge funds, banks, brokers, and insurance companies based on principal components analysis and Granger-causality tests. We find that all four sectors have become highly interrelated over the past decade, increasing the level of systemic risk in the finance and insurance indus...

The main challenge for any insurer/reinsurer has proved to be underwriting major refinery/Petrochemical risk. Insurers have already considered process risk management measures while accepting and evaluating the risks all over the world. Erstwhile petrochemical tariff was adopting experiencing methodology as basis for premium calculation in Iran. In the present de-tariff scenario decisions will ...

Major changes in competitive behaviour, recent dynamics in capital markets, and fundamental changes in regulatory requirements (Solvency II for European Union member countries) have placed increasing challenges on management strategy in insurance companies. Management is faced with a complex decision-making and strategic task of allocating and managing capital resources efficiently. This requir...

As financial markets become more global, the question arises whether any country specific considerations are still relevant for insurance companies’ capital structure. This research examines this question with firm-level data across a broad range of countries including those in developing markets. What we find is that the optimal capital structure of insurance companies is not homogeneous acros...

In recent years, because of the high potential for insurability in Turkey and the rapid improvement of insurance sector, foreign investors are interested in Turkish insurance market. Since insurability rate has reached saturation point in their countries, foreign investors tended to make investments in Turkey and start to purchase local insurance companies in Turkey. In this paper we analyze fi...

Online social network sites (OSNSs) pose a new trend in social communication that gains an enormous popularity in short time. Consequently, the chance for marketing of products and companies is opening. As well, the question about the possibility of using this channel also for the financial sector, including insurance companies, arises. This idea is followed up by the main goal of the paper: to...

This paper investigates competition between health insurance companies under different financing regulations. We consider two alternatives advanced in recent German health care reform discussions: competition by contribution rates (health contributions) and by fees (health premia). We find that contribution rate competition yields lower company profits and higher consumer welfare than premia co...

The global insurance industry provides investment and supportive insurance services such as: motor/vehicle, fire, home, personal accident, product liability, public liability and professional indemnity. These services are very beneficial to private individuals and companies and critically depend on the actual factors and risks involved in the insurance policy. There are risks involved in taking...