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PublicationThe Structure of the Global Reinsurance Market: An Analysis of Efficiency, Scale, and ScopeWe estimate economies of scale and scope as well as cost and revenue efficiency to explain the structure of the global reinsurance market, where large reinsurers dominate but both diversified and specialized reinsurers are competitive. The costs and benefits of size and product diversification are particularly relevant to the reinsurance industry, as risk diversification is central to the industry's business model. We find that reinsurers with total assets less than USD 2.9 billion exhibit scale economies, while those with total assets greater than USD 15.5 billion do not. Large reinsurers are characterized by high cost efficiency, while small reinsurers exhibit superior efficiency only when specialized. Large reinsurers also exhibit revenue scope economies when operating both life and nonlife reinsurance. Moreover, the evidence is in line with the efficient structure hypothesis: cost-efficient reinsurers can charge lower prices without sacrificing profitability.Type:Journal:Volume:
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PublicationCosts and Benefits of Financial Regulation – An Empirical Assessment for Insurance Companies(Palgrave Journals, 2016)We analyse the costs and benefits of financial regulation based on a survey of 76 insurers from Austria, Germany and Switzerland. Our analysis includes both established and new empirical measures for regulatory costs and benefits. This is the first paper that tries to take costs and benefits combined into account using a latent class regression with covariates. Moreover, we analyse regulatory costs and benefits not only on an industry level, but also at the company level. This allows us to empirically test fundamental principles of financial regulation such as proportionality: the intensity of regulation should reflect the firm-specific amount and complexity of the risk taken. Our findings do not support the proportionality principle; for example, regulatory costs cannot be explained by differences in business complexity. One potential policy implication is that the proportionality principle needs to be more carefully applied to financial regulation.Type:Journal:Volume:Issue:
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PublicationSystemic Risk in the Insurance Sector: Review and Directions for Future Research(Wiley-Blackwell, 2016)This article reviews the extant research on systemic risk in the insurance sector and outlines new areas of research in this field. We summarize and classify 48 theoretical and empirical research papers from both academia and practitioner organizations. The survey reveals that traditional insurance activity in the life, nonlife, and reinsurance sectors neither contributes to systemic risk nor increases insurers’ vulnerability to impairments of the financial system. However, nontraditional activities (e.g., credit default swap underwriting) might increase vulnerability, and life insurers might be more vulnerable than nonlife insurers due to higher leverage. Whether nontraditional activities also contribute to systemic risk is not entirely clear; however, the activities with the potential to contribute to systemic risk include underwriting financial derivatives and providing financial guarantees. This article is not only likely of interest to academics but also highly relevant for the industry, regulators, and policymakers.
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PublicationSystemic Risk and the Insurance Industy: Principal Linkages and Dependencies(Palgrave Macmillan, 2014)With respect to the insurance sector, Eling and Pankoke (2014) review 43 theoretical and empirical research papers on systemic risk and suggest several other areas of research that would be useful in this field. We build upon and extend the results by Eling and Pankoke (2014) as follows: After a discussion of the term ‘systemic risk' and a review of the extant research results on systemic risk in the insurance sector, we analyse the implications of this discussion for macroprudential supervision. For this purpose, we evaluate the relevance of banking-sector macroprudential instruments to the insurance sector. Moreover, we discuss to what extent systemic risk might be triggered by regulation itself, especially by Solvency II, the forthcoming European-wide regulatory framework for risk-based capital. Finally, in the last section we provide a summary of the points made in this chapter.
