|
Showing 1 - 19 of
19 matches in All Departments
Over the past two decades, the United States has successfully
deregulated prices and restrictions on most previously-regulated
industries, including airlines, trucking, railroads,
telecommunications, and banking. Only a few industries remain
regulated, the largest being the property-liability insurance
business. In light of recent sweeping financial modernization
legislation in other sectors of the insurance industry, this timely
volume examines the basis for continued regulation of rates and
forms of the U.S. property-liability insurance market. The book
focuses on private passenger automobile insurance --the most
important personal line of property-liability coverage, with annual
premiums of about $120 billion. The authors analyze five state case
studies: California, Massachusetts, and New Jersey --three of the
most heavily regulated states --as well as Illinois, which has been
deregulated for about 30 years, and South Carolina, which began to
deregulate in 1997. The study also includes an econometric analysis
based on all fifty states over a 25-year period that gauges the
impact of regulation on insurance price levels, price volatility,
and the proportion of automobiles insured in residual markets. The
authors conclude that regulation does not significantly reduce
long-run prices for consumers, and generally limits availability of
coverage, reduces the quality and variety of services available in
the market, inhibits productivity growth, and increases price
volatility. Contributors include Dwight Jaffee (University of
California, Berkeley), Thomas Russell (Santa Clara University ),
Laureen Regan (Temple University), Sharon Tennyson (Cornell
University), Mary Weiss (Temple University), John Worrall (Rutgers
University), Stephen D'Arcy (University of Illinois,
Urbana-Champaign), Martin Grace (Georgia State University), Robert
Klein (Georgia State University), Richard Phillips (Georgia State
University), Georges Dionne (University of Montreal), and Richard
Butler (Brigham Young University).
Handbook of International Insurance: Between Global Dynamics and
Local Contingencies analyzes key trends in the insurance industry
in more than 15 important national insurance markets that represent
over 90 percent of world insurance premiums. Well-known academics
from Europe, the Americas and Asia examine their own national
insurance markets, including the competitive structure, product and
service innovations, and regulatory developments. The book provides
academics and executives with an unprecedented range of information
about today's insurance markets. This book also provides important
'new' information on the evolution of the financial sector
worldwide and comprehensive chapters on reinsurance, Lloyd's of
London, alternative risk transfer, South and East Asian insurance
markets, and European insurance markets. Setting the stage is an
overview chapter by the editors focusing on overall conclusions on
globalization.
Property-liability insurance rates for most lines of business are
regulated in about one-half of the states. In most cases, this me
ans that rates must be filed with the state insurance commissioner
and approved prior to use. The remainder of the states have various
forms of competitive rating laws. These either require that rates
be filed prior to use but need not be approved or that rates need
not be filed at all. State rating laws are summarized in Rand
Corporation (1985). The predominant form of insurance rate
regulation, prior approval, began in the late 1940s following the
V. S. Supreme Court decision in United States vs. South-Eastern
Underwriters Association, 322 V. S. 533 (1944). This was an anti
trust case involving one of four regional associa tions of
insurance companies, which constituted an insurance cartel. The
case struck down an earlier decision, Paul vs. Virginia, 8 Wall 168
(1869), holding that the business of insurance was not interstate
commerce and hence that state regulation of insurance did not
violate the commerce clause of the V. S. Constitution. Following
South-Eastern Underwriters, the Vnited States Congress passed the
McCarran-Ferguson Act, which held that continued state regulation
and taxation of insurance was in the public interest. The act also
held that the federal antitrust laws would not apply to insurance
to the extent that the business was adequately regulated by state
law. (See V. S. Department of Justice 1977."
Major challenges for life insurance companies have been posed by an
unprecedented wave of mergers and acquisitions in the insurance
industry and the emergence of non-traditional competitors such as
banks, mutual fund companies and investment advisory firms. This is
the first book to analyze the determinants of firm performance in
the life insurance industry by identifying the `best practices'
employed by leading insurers to succeed in this dynamic business
environment. The book draws upon data from insurer financial
statements as well as upon an extensive survey of life insurer
management practices and strategic choices in distribution systems,
information technology, mergers and acquisitions, human resources
and financial strategies. Generic strategies such as cost
leadership, customer focus, and product differentiation are
analyzed as well as strategic practices specific to the insurance
industry. Best practices are identified by measuring the economic
efficiency of insurers and by comparing firms across the industry.
Both cost and revenue efficiency are measured relative to best
practice efficient frontiers consisting of the industry's dominant
life insurance firms. Economies of scale and the effects of mergers
and acquisitions on efficiency are also analyzed. Financial
strategies are examined with specific reference to pricing policy,
valuation of assets and liabilities, and the current state of
firm-level risk management systems. The benchmarks established are
the result of extensive fieldwork that identifies key financial
risks and methodologies to both measure and manage them at the firm
level. The results discussed in the book indicate that firm
performance is significantly correlated with management practices
and strategic choices. Thus, life insurers can improve
profitability by adopting optimal combinations of strategies. The
book contains important new material on the effects of strategic
choices in product distribution systems, information technology,
mergers and acquisitions, human resources, and financial risk
management policies. In the area of efficiency, the methodology
provides a new approach for identifying peer groups of insurers and
measuring the performance of individual insurers relative to their
peer group. On the topics of risk and pricing, new insights are
offered relative to current methodologies and in regard to areas
where improvement is clearly warranted. The book concludes with an
analysis of the future opportunities and challenges in the life
insurance industry facing managers, and the strategic options
available to them to cope with these changes.
th This book is published to commemorate the 50 Anniversary of the
S.S. Huebner Foundation for Insurance Education. Administered at
the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, the Huebner
Foundation was established in 1941 to strengthen insurance
education at the collegiate level by increasing the number of
professors specializing in insurance and enriching the literature
in the field. The financial support of leading life insurance
companies has enabled the Foundation to provide post-graduate
education for prospective insurance teachers and scholars. Through
its fellowship program, the Foundation supports students in the
Ph.D. program in Risk and Insurance at the Wharton School. The
success of the Foundation is measured by the accomplishments of its
alumni. Former Huebner Fellows play leading roles in every major
area of insurance education. Fellows teach insurance to tens of
thousands of undergraduate and MBA students each year and have
written hundreds of books and thousands of articles on insurance.
Fellows hold leadership positions at the American College, the Life
Office Management Association, and the Certified Employee Benefit
Specialist Program. The Foundation was created in honor of Dr.
Solomon S. Huebner, a pioneer in insurance education. Dr. Huebner
taught the first organized course on the economics of insurance
ever offered at the collegiate level in 1904. An internationally
recognized author and teacher, Dr. Huebner had a profound impact on
both insurance education and the insurance industry. He served on
the faculty of the Wharton School for more than nearly fifty years.
Two different applications have been considered, automobile claims
from Massachusetts and health expenses from the Netherlands. We
have fit 11 different distributions to these data. The
distributions are conveniently nested within a single four
parameter distribution, the generalized beta of the second type.
This relationship facilitates analysis and comparisons. In both
cases the GB2 provided the best fit and the Burr 3 is the best
three parameter model. In the case of automobile claims, the
flexibility of the GB2 provides a statistically siE;nificant
improvement in fit over all other models. In the case of Dutch
health expenses the improvement of the GB2 relative to several
alternatives was not statistically significant. * The author
appreciates the research assistance of Mark Bean, Young Yong Kim
and Steve White. The data used were provided by Richard Derrig of
The Massachusetts Automobile Rating and Accident Prevention Bureau
and by Bob Van der Laan and The Silver Cross Foundation for the
medical insurance claim data. 2~ REFERENCES Arnold, B. C. 1983.
Pareto Distributions. Bartonsville: International Cooperative
Publishing House. Cummins, J. D. and L. R. Freifelder. 1978. A
comparative analysis of alternative maximum probable yearly
aggregate loss estimators. Journal of Risk and Insurance 45:27-52.
*Cummins, J. D., G. Dionne, and L. Maistre. 1987. Application of
the GB2 family of distributions in collective risk theory.
University of Pennsylvania: Mimeographed manuscript. Hogg, R. V.
and S. A. Klugman. 1983. On the estimation of long tailed skewed
distributions with actuarial applications.
The Geneva Association and Risk Economics The Geneva Association
The Geneva Association (International Association for the Study of
Insurance Economics) commenced its activities in June 1973, on the
initiative of twenty-two members in eight European countries. It
now has fifty-four members in sixteen countries in Europe and in
the United States. The members of the association are insurance
companies which provide financial support for its activities. The
aims and strategy of the Geneva Association were clearly defined in
1971 by the founding committee. They were set forth in the first
report to the Assembly of Members in 1974: "To make an original
contribution to the progress of insurance by objective studies on
the interdependence between economics and insurance." In pursuit of
this objective, the Association strives to place insurance problems
in the context of the modern economy and to overcome the antagonism
between different groups and institutions by showing that they all
have a common interest in tackling the problem of risk in a
changing world. In consequence, the studies made by the Association
had to move away from the subjects familiar to insurance
professionals and explore related fields, dealing with opinions and
behavior falling outside the profession's vii FOREWORD viii
traditional framework of analysis. It is in this direction that the
Association's preoccupations have been directed from the beginning,
towards areas in which insurance activities come into contact with
those of other economic sectors such as government, banking,
manufacturing, and households.
The problem of solvency is, in fact, as old as insurance. The
history of the industry knows many ways to meet the risks involved
with underwriting, such as spreading the risk portfolio (Cato,
Senior already applied it), risk selection, reserve funds,
reinsurance, etc. Whilst these measures too often proved
ineffective, the establish ment of legislative control and public
supervision ensued. However, not until the last few decades has the
solvency issue become an ob ject of intensive studies, very much
thanks to the progress of related empirical and theoretical
knowledge, and in the under standing of the concerned complicated
processes. The research activities have grown extensively in many
countries in recent years. The more the studies advance the more
new relevant aspects are detected and a great variety of
alternative proposals have come up for discussion. Therefore, it
has become necessary to attempt a survey of the whole problem area
in order to be able to place the quite numerous pieces of knowledge
in their proper context, and also, among other things, to avoid the
pitfalls of handling isolated problems omitting vital tie-ins to
the environment. Many of the rele vant problems and subproblems are
still lacking adequate and well tested solutions. Therefore, a
survey of the whole problem area can also hopefully serve as
guidance for future research efforts."
The First International Conference on Insurance Solvency was held
at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania from June 18th
through June 20th, 1986. The conference was the inaugural event for
Wharton's Center for Research on Risk and Insurance. In atten dance
were thirty-nine representatives from Australia, Canada, France,
Germany, Israel, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The
papers presented at the Conference are published in two volumes,
this book and a companion volume, Classical Insurance Solvency
Theory, J. D. Cummins and R. A. Derrig, eds. (Norwell, MA: Kluwer
Academic Publishers, 1988). The first volume presented two papers
reflecting important advances in actuarial solvency theory. The
current volume goes beyond the actuarial approach to encom pass
papers applying the insights and techniques of financial economics.
The papers fall into two groups. The first group con sists of
papers that adopt an essentially actuarial or statistical ap proach
to solvency modelling. These papers represent methodology advances
over prior efforts at operational modelling of insurance companies.
The emphasis is on cash flow analysis and many of the models
incorporate investment income, inflation, taxation, and other
economic variables. The papers in second group bring financial
economics to bear on various aspects of solvency analysis. These
papers discuss insurance applications of asset pricing models,
capital structure theory, and the economic theory of agency."
The research project leading to this book was initiated in the fall
of 1979 when the American Council of Life Insurance (ACLI)
contacted Dan McGill, chairman of the Wharton School Insurance
Department, about conducting a study on risk classification in life
insurance. The ACLI was concerned about legislative and judicial
activity in this area and its potential effects on the life
insurance industry. A meeting was held at the ACLI offices in
Washington, D.C., between several members of the ACLI staff and Dan
McGill and David Cummins representing the Wharton School insurance
department. An agreement was reached that a study would be
conducted at Wharton dealing with issues in risk classification.
Although the staff of the ACLI suggested directions the study might
take, it was agreed that the design and execution of the study
would be solely under the control of the researchers. The
researchers also retained unrestricted publication rights in the
results of the study. This agreement has been honored by the ACLI
during the course of the project.
Insurance and financial markets have been radically and deeply
changed in the last 20 years. Deregulation, internationalization of
insurance and financial institutions, increasing competition,
electronic commerce, bancassurance, and the emergence of new risks
are among the challenges faced by insurers and other financial
firms. These developing trends pose both global and local
challenges for financial firms participating in insurance markets.
The Handbook of International Insurance: Between Global Dynamics
and Local Contingencies increases understanding of insurance
markets by adopting an international comparative approach. Leading
scholars and practitioners worldwide provide detailed information
on market trends, regulation, taxation, and economic developments
for thirteen specific countries in Europe, the Americas, and Asia.
Each country chapter covers key aspects of insurance: life
insurance, non-life insurance, and public and private social
insurance programs. The book also includes comprehensive chapters
on reinsurance, Lloyd's of London, alternative risk transfer, South
and East Asian insurance markets, and European insurance
markets.Setting the stage is an overview chapter by the editors
focusing on overall conclusions on globalization. A unique source
of information on the evolution of insurance markets worldwide,
this book provides valuable perspectives for scholars,
practitioners, and policy makers.
Major challenges for life insurance companies have been posed by an
unprecedented wave of mergers and acquisitions in the insurance
industry and the emergence of non-traditional competitors such as
banks, mutual fund companies and investment advisory firms. This is
the first book to analyze the determinants of firm performance in
the life insurance industry by identifying the best practices'
employed by leading insurers to succeed in this dynamic business
environment. The book draws upon data from insurer financial
statements as well as upon an extensive survey of life insurer
management practices and strategic choices in distribution systems,
information technology, mergers and acquisitions, human resources
and financial strategies. Generic strategies such as cost
leadership, customer focus, and product differentiation are
analyzed as well as strategic practices specific to the insurance
industry. Best practices are identified by measuring the economic
efficiency of insurers and by comparing firms across the industry.
Both cost and revenue efficiency are measured relative to best
practice efficient frontiers consisting of the industry's dominant
life insurance firms. Economies of scale and the effects of mergers
and acquisitions on efficiency are also analyzed. Financial
strategies are examined with specific reference to pricing policy,
valuation of assets and liabilities, and the current state of
firm-level risk management systems. The benchmarks established are
the result of extensive fieldwork that identifies key financial
risks and methodologies to both measure and manage them at the firm
level. The results discussed in the book indicate that firm
performance is significantly correlated with management practices
and strategic choices. Thus, life insurers can improve
profitability by adopting optimal combinations of strategies. The
book contains important new material on the effects of strategic
choices in product distribution systems, information technology,
mergers and acquisitions, human resources, and financial risk
management policies. In the area of efficiency, the methodology
provides a new approach for identifying peer groups of insurers and
measuring the performance of individual insurers relative to their
peer group. On the topics of risk and pricing, new insights are
offered relative to current methodologies and in regard to areas
where improvement is clearly warranted. The book concludes with an
analysis of the future opportunities and challenges in the life
insurance industry facing managers, and the strategic options
available to them to cope with these changes.
th This book is published to commemorate the 50 Anniversary of the
S.S. Huebner Foundation for Insurance Education. Administered at
the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, the Huebner
Foundation was established in 1941 to strengthen insurance
education at the collegiate level by increasing the number of
professors specializing in insurance and enriching the literature
in the field. The financial support of leading life insurance
companies has enabled the Foundation to provide post-graduate
education for prospective insurance teachers and scholars. Through
its fellowship program, the Foundation supports students in the
Ph.D. program in Risk and Insurance at the Wharton School. The
success of the Foundation is measured by the accomplishments of its
alumni. Former Huebner Fellows play leading roles in every major
area of insurance education. Fellows teach insurance to tens of
thousands of undergraduate and MBA students each year and have
written hundreds of books and thousands of articles on insurance.
Fellows hold leadership positions at the American College, the Life
Office Management Association, and the Certified Employee Benefit
Specialist Program. The Foundation was created in honor of Dr.
Solomon S. Huebner, a pioneer in insurance education. Dr. Huebner
taught the first organized course on the economics of insurance
ever offered at the collegiate level in 1904. An internationally
recognized author and teacher, Dr. Huebner had a profound impact on
both insurance education and the insurance industry. He served on
the faculty of the Wharton School for more than nearly fifty years.
Two different applications have been considered, automobile claims
from Massachusetts and health expenses from the Netherlands. We
have fit 11 different distributions to these data. The
distributions are conveniently nested within a single four
parameter distribution, the generalized beta of the second type.
This relationship facilitates analysis and comparisons. In both
cases the GB2 provided the best fit and the Burr 3 is the best
three parameter model. In the case of automobile claims, the
flexibility of the GB2 provides a statistically siE;nificant
improvement in fit over all other models. In the case of Dutch
health expenses the improvement of the GB2 relative to several
alternatives was not statistically significant. * The author
appreciates the research assistance of Mark Bean, Young Yong Kim
and Steve White. The data used were provided by Richard Derrig of
The Massachusetts Automobile Rating and Accident Prevention Bureau
and by Bob Van der Laan and The Silver Cross Foundation for the
medical insurance claim data. 2~ REFERENCES Arnold, B. C. 1983.
Pareto Distributions. Bartonsville: International Cooperative
Publishing House. Cummins, J. D. and L. R. Freifelder. 1978. A
comparative analysis of alternative maximum probable yearly
aggregate loss estimators. Journal of Risk and Insurance 45:27-52.
*Cummins, J. D., G. Dionne, and L. Maistre. 1987. Application of
the GB2 family of distributions in collective risk theory.
University of Pennsylvania: Mimeographed manuscript. Hogg, R. V.
and S. A. Klugman. 1983. On the estimation of long tailed skewed
distributions with actuarial applications.
The First International Conference on Insurance Solvency was held
at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania from June 18th
through June 20th, 1986. The conference was the inaugural event for
Wharton's Center for Research on Risk and Insurance. In atten dance
were thirty-nine representatives from Australia, Canada, France,
Germany, Israel, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The
papers presented at the Conference are published in two volumes,
this book and a companion volume, Classical Insurance Solvency
Theory, J. D. Cummins and R. A. Derrig, eds. (Norwell, MA: Kluwer
Academic Publishers, 1988). The first volume presented two papers
reflecting important advances in actuarial solvency theory. The
current volume goes beyond the actuarial approach to encom pass
papers applying the insights and techniques of financial economics.
The papers fall into two groups. The first group con sists of
papers that adopt an essentially actuarial or statistical ap proach
to solvency modelling. These papers represent methodology advances
over prior efforts at operational modelling of insurance companies.
The emphasis is on cash flow analysis and many of the models
incorporate investment income, inflation, taxation, and other
economic variables. The papers in second group bring financial
economics to bear on various aspects of solvency analysis. These
papers discuss insurance applications of asset pricing models,
capital structure theory, and the economic theory of agency."
The problem of solvency is, in fact, as old as insurance. The
history of the industry knows many ways to meet the risks involved
with underwriting, such as spreading the risk portfolio (Cato,
Senior already applied it), risk selection, reserve funds,
reinsurance, etc. Whilst these measures too often proved
ineffective, the establish ment of legislative control and public
supervision ensued. However, not until the last few decades has the
solvency issue become an ob ject of intensive studies, very much
thanks to the progress of related empirical and theoretical
knowledge, and in the under standing of the concerned complicated
processes. The research activities have grown extensively in many
countries in recent years. The more the studies advance the more
new relevant aspects are detected and a great variety of
alternative proposals have come up for discussion. Therefore, it
has become necessary to attempt a survey of the whole problem area
in order to be able to place the quite numerous pieces of knowledge
in their proper context, and also, among other things, to avoid the
pitfalls of handling isolated problems omitting vital tie-ins to
the environment. Many of the rele vant problems and subproblems are
still lacking adequate and well tested solutions. Therefore, a
survey of the whole problem area can also hopefully serve as
guidance for future research efforts."
The Geneva Association and Risk Economics The Geneva Association
The Geneva Association (International Association for the Study of
Insurance Economics) commenced its activities in June 1973, on the
initiative of twenty-two members in eight European countries. It
now has fifty-four members in sixteen countries in Europe and in
the United States. The members of the association are insurance
companies which provide financial support for its activities. The
aims and strategy of the Geneva Association were clearly defined in
1971 by the founding committee. They were set forth in the first
report to the Assembly of Members in 1974: "To make an original
contribution to the progress of insurance by objective studies on
the interdependence between economics and insurance." In pursuit of
this objective, the Association strives to place insurance problems
in the context of the modern economy and to overcome the antagonism
between different groups and institutions by showing that they all
have a common interest in tackling the problem of risk in a
changing world. In consequence, the studies made by the Association
had to move away from the subjects familiar to insurance
professionals and explore related fields, dealing with opinions and
behavior falling outside the profession's vii FOREWORD viii
traditional framework of analysis. It is in this direction that the
Association's preoccupations have been directed from the beginning,
towards areas in which insurance activities come into contact with
those of other economic sectors such as government, banking,
manufacturing, and households.
The research project leading to this book was initiated in the fall
of 1979 when the American Council of Life Insurance (ACLI)
contacted Dan McGill, chairman of the Wharton School Insurance
Department, about conducting a study on risk classification in life
insurance. The ACLI was concerned about legislative and judicial
activity in this area and its potential effects on the life
insurance industry. A meeting was held at the ACLI offices in
Washington, D.C., between several members of the ACLI staff and Dan
McGill and David Cummins representing the Wharton School insurance
department. An agreement was reached that a study would be
conducted at Wharton dealing with issues in risk classification.
Although the staff of the ACLI suggested directions the study might
take, it was agreed that the design and execution of the study
would be solely under the control of the researchers. The
researchers also retained unrestricted publication rights in the
results of the study. This agreement has been honored by the ACLI
during the course of the project.
'Catastrophe Risk Financing in Developing Countries' provides a
detailed analysis of the imperfections and inefficiencies that
impede the emergence of competitive catastrophe risk markets in
developing countries. The book demonstrates how donors and
international financial institutions can assist governments in
middle- and low-income countries in promoting effective and
affordable catastrophe risk financing solutions. The authors
present guiding principles on how and when governments, with
assistance from donors and international financial institutions,
should intervene in catastrophe insurance markets. They also
identify key activities to be undertaken by donors and institutions
that would allow middle- and low-income countries to develop
competitive and cost-effective catastrophe risk financing
strategies at both the macro (government) and micro (household)
levels. These principles and activities are expected to inform good
practices and ensure desirable results in catastrophe insurance
projects. 'Catastrophe Risk Financing in Developing Countries'
offers valuable advice and guidelines to policy makers and
insurance practitioners involved in the development of catastrophe
insurance programs in developing countries.
|
You may like...
Morbius
Jared Leto, Matt Smith, …
DVD
R179
Discovery Miles 1 790
Loot
Nadine Gordimer
Paperback
(2)
R398
R330
Discovery Miles 3 300
Ab Wheel
R209
R149
Discovery Miles 1 490
|