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The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the technical efficiency in the Jordan insurance market and examine the internal and external determinants that appear to affect the technical efficiency of the insurance companies.

The study used panel data for 22 insurance companies operating inside Jordan over the period 2000–2016. The author used the data envelopment analysis to evaluate the technical efficiency scores, slacks-based and logit models to examine the efficiency determinants.

The study found that there is a slight development of technical efficiency for the Jordanian insurance companies during the study period. In addition, there is a substantial efficiency difference among insurance companies each year, and there is a variation at the level of efficiency for each company in each year. The results also showed that owners’ equities are among the most important internal determinants of companies’ efficiency, and there is a significant correlation between type, size and return on assets of the insurer and its efficiency.

This study provides insurance management with relevant indicators that would guide them to make efficient use of the resource base. The period of study also covers the period following the adoption of the insurance law and the issuance of most of the legislation related to the work of insurance companies.

Property and casualty (“P&C”) insurance companies rely on “risk capital” to absorb large losses that unexpectedly deplete claims‐paying resources and reduce underwriting capacity. The purpose of this paper is to review the similarities and differences between two different types of risk capital raised by insurers to cover losses arising from natural catastrophes: internal risk capital provided by investors in insurance company debt and equity; and external risk capital provided by third parties. The paper also explores the distinctions between four types of external catastrophe risk capital: reinsurance, industry loss warranties, catastrophe derivatives, and insurance‐linked securities. Finally, how the credit crisis has impacted alternative sources of catastrophe risk capital in different ways is considered.

The discussion is based on the conceptual framework for analyzing risk capital developed by Merton and Perold.

In 2008, the P&C insurance industry was adversely affected by significant natural catastrophe‐related losses, floundering investments, and limited access to capital markets, all of which put upward pressure on catastrophe reinsurance premiums. But the influx of new risk capital that generally accompanies hardening markets has been slower than usual to occur in the wake of the credit crisis. Meanwhile, disparities between the relative costs and benefits of alternative sources of catastrophe risk capital are even more pronounced than usual.

Although many insurance companies focus on how much reinsurance to buy, this paper emphasizes that a more important question is how much risk capital to acquire from external parties (and in what form) vis‐à‐vis investors in the insurance company's own securities.

Based on the perspective of complexity theory, the operation process of property insurance companies can be regarded as a complex dynamic nonlinear chaotic system. This paper aims to measure the operating efficiency of 29 Chinese domestic property and casualty (P&C) companies and 18 foreign-invested P&C companies from 2011 to 2017 and outline the path to achieving high-quality development.

The data were obtained from the Chinese Insurance Yearbook and China Statistical Yearbook 2012–2018. The data envelopment analysis method was used to calculate the technical efficiency of property insurance companies and fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis is used for configuration analysis of determinants affecting technical efficiency.

This paper founds the average technical efficiency of Chinese domestic P&C insurance companies was 0.914 and that of foreign-invested P&C insurance companies was 0.895. The average total factor productivity of Chinese domestic P&C insurance companies was 1.058 and that of foreign-invested P&C insurance companies was 1.051. There were three modes to improve the company’s technical efficiency, with high loss ratio and low reinsurance ratio, poor employee education and higher leverage ratio and high leverage ratio and low reinsurance ratio as the core conditions.

This study puts forward four applicable, targeted and proven ways to improve the technical efficiency of China’s P&C insurance industry. These configurations were verified by the cases of existing property insurance companies, which can provide practical references for the insurance industry.

The purpose of this paper is to identify possible reasons for insurance companies' scant interest in real estate as investment asset in Poland. The authors attempt to determine the impact of real estate investment on insurance companies' profitability.

After collecting the aggregated data about insurance companies' financial results for the period 2000‐2008 the authors analyzed the relationship between real estate investment and profitability indicators such as return on assets (ROA), return on equity (ROE) and return on sales (ROS). This approach reflected the shareholders' point‐of‐view. Subsequently, the same kind of analysis was carried out to investigate the impact of real estate investments on the insurance companies' return on technical activity (RTA) and return on investment activity (RIA). These indicators are meant to assess business performance from the point‐of‐view of insured persons.

The analysis revealed some negative correlations: real estate investments may reduce the profitability of insurance companies. If this is true, the unwillingness of insurance companies to purchase property would not be surprising. Yet, this conclusion should be accepted with caution.

Due to the short study period and changes in legal classification of investment categories, the available data were very imperfect and the study results may not be perceived as undisputable, hence, it is felt that further research is needed.

The paper is original, as previously no such research has been conducted in Poland.

This paper aims to theoretically examine the effects of regulatory policyholder protection on spread behavior and default probability of a life insurance company.

The authors construct a contingent claim model for the valuation of the equity of a life insurance company. Then, they extend it to model default risk measures associated with a more appropriate behavioral mode of strategic invested asset rate-setting under regulation.

The findings established that the optimal insurer interest margin is explicitly modeled by a spread between the loan rate and the required guaranteed rate of the company. The effect of the guaranteed rate on the insurer interest margin is positive when the barrier is low, whereas it is negative when the barrier is high. As the barrier increases, the positive effect of the guaranteed rate on the default risk is increased, the negative effect of the participation on the insurer interest margin is decreased and the positive effect of the participation on the default risk is decreased.

Several results derived that should be of interest to investors, analysts, supervising agencies and policymakers. For example, policyholders protected by increasing the guaranteed rate may create a higher risk for the life insurance company to meet its obligations.

The authors’ approach is a significant departure from the existing literature; they differentiate among path-dependent, barrier options and suggest that the life insurance company’s defaults are more commonly triggered by regulatory responses than debt default.

The purpose of this paper is to fill a gap in the foreign exchange rate exposure management literature as the existing literature has focused only on developed economics, and also the current literature on foreign exchange rate exposure of cedant insurance companies is very limited. As Egyptian insurance companies deal directly with foreign exchange rates, they face exposure to exchange rates through their international reinsurance operations.

Martin and Mauer (2003, 2005) three-stage model is used to estimate foreign exchange rate transaction exposure for the sample of 23 Egyptian insurance companies over the period 2002-2009. However, the author has two innovations to this method. The author's first innovation is that instead of looking at the unanticipated operating income for each cedant company (as in both previous papers), this paper looks at the unanticipated operating income on an aggregate level. The author's second innovation is that instead of the model used in previous papers the author uses a model from the actuarial field that was proposed by Blum et al. (2001) for modelling foreign exchange rates with their relevant constituents (inflation and interest rate).

The central finding of the study is that the foreign exchange rate exposure across the Egyptian insurance industry is not significant (at the 10 per cent level) and investigates this result.

This study has made considerable contributions to the existing academic literature, but the findings also illustrate the limitations of the research undertaken. These limitations, however, provide important directions for future research. This thesis focused exclusively on the transaction exposure that Egyptian insurance companies experience to fluctuations in the US dollar exchange rate in relation to their international reinsurance operations. As a result, investigating both translation and economic exposure was beyond the scope and purpose of this study.

The findings of this research provide meaningful implications for industry practitioners. As Egyptian insurance companies are not immune from exchange rate risks, efforts must be made by each insurer to approximate and quantify their individual foreign exchange rate transaction exposure. Additionally, as Egyptian insurance companies increasingly operate worldwide (through the international reinsurance industry), this research and its results are significant for practitioners not only in Egypt, but also further afield. Finally, it is believed that this research will highlight greater implications for international financial players active in Egyptian financial and non-financial sectors, including banks not exposed singularly to US dollars, but to multiple currencies. One recent Egyptian example is Egypt Air, which lost an estimated US$600 million in 2013 due to foreign exchange rate fluctuations.

Since Egyptian insurance operates worldwide, the results of this paper are of significant not only for Egyptian insurance managers but also to practitioners beyond Egypt.

Traditional statistical methods to study the financial performance of any industry have many barriers and limitations in terms of the statistical distribution of the financial ratios, and, in particular, it considers only its positive values of it. The purpose of this paper is to estimate the financial performance of 24 Indian life insurance companies for the period from 2013 to 2016 using Grey relational analysis (GRA) proposed by Deng (1982) that accommodates the negative values in the analysis.

Financial performance of 24 Indian life insurance companies for the years from 2013–2014 to 2015–2016 is examined using a total of 14 indicators from capital adequacy ratios, liquidity ratios, operating ratios and profitability ratios (PR). The methodology used is GRA to obtain the Grey grades to rank the performance indicators, where higher relational grade shows better financial performance, and a lower score depicts the scope for improving the performance.

The results rank the insurance companies according to their financial performance in which Shriram insurance stands first with higher relational grade score, followed by the companies like IDBI Insurance, Sahara Insurance and Life Insurance Corporation of India. The main finding is that PR which have negative values are playing a crucial role in determining the financial performance of Indian life insurance companies.

This study has far-reaching practical implications in twofold: first, for the Indian life insurance industry, they have to concentrate more on PR for better financial health and, second, for any financial performance analysis, ignoring negative value ratios produce biased inference and GRA can be used for better inference.

This study is the first attempt to evaluate the financial performance of Indian life insurance using the GRA methodology. The advantage of GRA is that there is no restrictions on the statistical distribution of the data and it also accommodates the negative values, whereas all the other traditional methods insist on the statistical distribution of data, and, more importantly, they cannot handle negative values in the performance analysis.

The present study aims to provide an overview of the life insurance industry in India and scrutinise various dimensions impacting life insurance uptake in accordance with the views of the management representatives. An exploratory study was assumed by conducting in-depth face-to-face/telephonic interviews with six employees and one agent affiliated to the most prominent life insurance companies operating in India. The interviews focused on operation of life insurance companies in general, their work culture, approach towards individuals/customers, steps taken to attract and retain their human capital (agents), the overall impact of reforms on the life insurance industry and their tactics which make them unique in the market. The study observed that life insurance uptake in India is discernibly affected by an individual's financial knowledge, needs and the level of trust they have on the company apart from brand of the life insurance company and grievance redressal system. It was also found that reforms (Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) Policy, entry of private players) did bring about a difference in work culture, improved employment opportunities and increased the reach of the insurance industry in the country. The study highlights dimensions that life insurance companies constantly work/need to work upon to remain at the zenith of success, broadens the horizons of the life insurance industry in an emerging nation like India as it is one of the few studies to have probed the management's outlook of the Indian life insurance industry and holds scope for future theoretical investigation and development of a comprehensive model as well.

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the real estate investment performance portfolio decision-making of the insurance firms by the National Housing Fund (NHF) Act in reducing the housing deficit in Nigeria. The insurance companies' gross premium, real estate investment and return on investment trends for the period 2014–2019 were evaluated, to determine the extent of their investment in real estate in Nigeria, this ought to have reduced the shortfall in housing.

Both primary and secondary sources were used. Cronbach’s alpha was used for testing the reliability. The Friedman mean rank with Chi-square was used for different types of real estate investment properties and for reasons for investing in real estate by insurance companies in Nigeria. The test for normality was conducted using the Shapiro–Wilk and Spearman correlation for the significance. The percentage and the data envelopment analysis frontier model were used for measuring performance and efficiency.

The results showed that the majority of real estate investments made by insurance companies were in commercial and land buying and reselling and that their performance was below average. However, their motivation for investing is not toward the NHF Act but rather for diversification and increasing their capital.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is one of the first studies in Nigeria that looked at how well insurance firms have performed investing in real estate as required by the NHF Act. However, the new Act, the National Housing Fund (Establishment) Act of 2018 which was put on hold due to flaws, affected data availability beyond 2019.

Insurance frauds deeply affect insurance companies, policyholders, and the insurance industry as a whole. The cost of fraudulent damage affects the profitability of companies, and has negative effects on the society in terms of moral values. Increases in insurance costs can lead to increases in the premiums paid by policyholders, each family, and, ultimately, all of the insured. Recently, new legal regulations related to this issue have been performed in Turkey and higher institutions have been created. A regulation issued by the Under-secretariat of the Treasury, on June 1, 2011, defines insurance fraud as aggravated fraud. Insurance fraud in Turkey usually takes the form of intentional misrepresentations of facts to the insurance company to get the company to pay for something not actually covered by the policy. Studies examined the insurance industry in terms of the concept of financial crime, and inclusion of the concept of financial crime in insurance regulations was proposed since financial crimes have an important place in the current problems of the industry. In addition, it is seen that insurance frauds have changed over time as a result of studies.