scholarly journals Do Financial Experts on the Board Matter? An Empirical Test From the United Kingdom’s Non-Life Insurance Industry

2017 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 168-195 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mike Adams ◽  
Wei Jiang

We examine the relation between board-level financial expertise and six measures of performance using panel data drawn from the United Kingdom’s non-life insurance industry. We find that collectively, financial experts have a beneficial influence on the performance outcomes of insurers. We also observe that board-level qualified accountants and actuaries are linked with superior performance in all six of our selected financial outcome measures. Professional insurance underwriters are associated with sound solvency levels (low leverage) and underwriting results, but not positive earnings-based measures. This suggests that underwriters may not be as adept at group-level earnings enhancement as accountants and actuaries. In addition, we find that the introduction of IFRS 4 in 2004/2005 did not have a significant impact on board composition and financial outcomes. Finally, we consider that our results could have commercial and/or policy implications.

2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 219
Author(s):  
Maoguo Wu ◽  
Yanyuan Wang

At present, the life insurance industry in China is still in the initial stage of development, which is characterized by limited scale, low penetration rate and low intensity. However, the large population base, the proliferation of middle classes, and the continuously improving socio-economic environment in China imply underlying developmental opportunities for the life insurance industry. Gaps in state pension have appeared owing to the issue of aging population, which signals that insurance companies with commercial properties may become an integral part of resident endowment. Ever since 2014, Chinese government has implemented numerous policies that are beneficial to the life insurance industry, for instance, diversifying investment channels of premiums, allowing a certain proportion of premiums in risky investments, and removing the restriction that the rate of return on common stakeholders’ equity (ROE) of participating insurance is capped at 5%. This paper constructs a panel data of 36 Chinese life insurance companies from 2010 to 2014. A serial of preliminary tests are taken in order to avoid spurious regression. By dint of the fixed effect model and panel threshold model, the paper analyzes the relation between operation-related factors and the corporate performance of life insurance companies. According to empirical findings, bancassurance income rate, professional insurance agency income rate, participating insurance income rate, group insurance income rate, company scale and solvency adequacy ratio are negatively correlated with corporate performance. When life insurance companies are associated with banks in capitals, bancassurance income rate positively influences corporate performance. The paper also investigates the impact of specific marketing channel structure and product structure on corporate performance. Policy implications are proposed accordingly.


Author(s):  
Medha Srivastava ◽  
Alok Kumar Rai

The widespread reverence for customer loyalty among marketers and businesses all across the globe is inspired from its manifestations since it’s the consumption decisions of loyal customers that leave a mammoth mark over the revenues and growth of a firm. A throng of behavioural, attitudinal and cognitive manifestations of customer loyalty are available in the literature some of which are widely acknowledged and accepted whereas others call for further inquiry. These manifestations of loyalty among customers are generally pinned down through their actions (Zeithaml et al., 1996; Jones et al., 2000) or their attitude towards the company or a particular product/ service (Javalgi and Moberg, 1997; Butcher et al., 2001). However, recent literature suggests that another outcome of loyalty is customer preferring a particular service provider to others based upon the conscious evaluation of brand attributes (Gremler and Brown, 1996; Butcher et al., 2001). The paper intends to explore and empirically test various manifestations of customer loyalty in the context of life insurance services thereby, extending the existing knowledge of customer loyalty by outlining the distinctive nature of customer loyalty outcomes and offering useful insights to the marketing practitioners in life insurance industry. The study further groups these manifestations into distinct outcome classes and empirically evaluates them by comparing and contrasting each with the other. It also aims to enrich the literature of customer loyalty by developing and validating a scale for measurement of customer loyalty outcomes with special reference to life insurance services.


Author(s):  
Md Rafiqul Islam ◽  
Shaowu Liu ◽  
Rhys Biddle ◽  
Imran Razzak ◽  
Xianzhi Wang ◽  
...  

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