This paper compares different performance metrics used for value-based management in life and non-life insurance business. The goal is to find a consistent basis for performance measurement at the insurance group level. This is an important task since management techniques used in non-life insurance, such as economic value added (EVA) and risk-adjusted return on capital (RAROC), are at first si...

Using panel data from the 2007-09 Survey of Consumer Finances, this research explores channels through which the Great Recession affected households’ demand for life insurance policies. Existing literature suggests that the economic downturn induced changes in insurance coverage due to both financial and psychological shocks. This paper utilizes Probit regressions with differenced explanatory v...

Joint life insurance policies can be issued to married couples so that the insurance payoff is due at the time of the first death of a spouse (joint-life policy) or the second death of a spouse (last survivor policy). In recent years, a certain attention in the actuarial industry has been attracted to the latter. These policies are generally used by older couples for estate tax purposes and car...

Source of earnings analysis has long been a staple of life insurance policy pricing and profitability monitoring. It has grown in importance with the advent of universal life insurance and of similar contracts with non-guaranteed benefits or charges. SFAS 97 now mandates the use of source of earnings analysis for GAAP reporting of universal life-type contracts. Source of earnings analysis is eq...

BACKGROUND We study the impact of suicide-exclusion periods, common in life insurance policies in Australia, on suicide and accidental death rates for life-insured individuals. If a life-insured individual dies by suicide during the period of suicide exclusion, commonly 13 months, the sum insured is not paid. AIMS We examine whether a suicide-exclusion period affects the timing of suicides. W...

BACKGROUND Universal national health insurance, financed jointly by payroll taxes, subsidies, and individual premiums, commenced in Taiwan in 1995. Coverage expanded from 57% of the population (before the introduction of national health insurance) to 98%. OBJECTIVE To assess the role of national health insurance in improving life expectancy and reducing health disparities in Taiwan. DESIGN ...

We present a model of life-insurance purchase that takes into account the age of the beneficiary. The beneficiaries considered herein are young children with no resources whose consumption needs are protected by purchasing life insurance if the breadwinner dies. We show that income transfer grows as the child ages; however, the size of contingent bequest shrinks because the need for protection ...

This study investigates the firm-specific factors affecting the profitability of non-life insurance companies operating in Turkey. For this purpose, data of 24 non-life insurance companies operating in Turkey from the period 2006–2013 were brought together to obtain 192 observed panel data sets. In this study, profitability is measured by two different variables: technical profitability ratio a...