Semir Ben Ammar

We conduct a comprehensive asset pricing analysis for the U.S. property/liability insurance industry using monthly data from 1988 to 2015. We find that state-of-the-art models such as the Fama and French (2015) five-factor model cannot explain the returns of property/liability insurance stocks in a satisfactory way. We adapt the model proposed by Adrian et al. (2015) for financial institutions and define an insurance-specific five-factor asset pricing model (INS5), which can explain the cross-section of property/liability insurance-stock returns better than competing models. The priced factors are the market return, the book-to-market ratio, return on equity, short-term reversal, and the spread between the property/liability insurance sector and the market return.

The risk of infrastructure investments is driven by unique factors that cannot be well described by standard asset class factor models. We thus create a nine-factor model based on infrastructure-specific risk exposure, i.e., market risk, size, value, momentum, cash flow volatility, leverage, investment growth, term risk, and default risk. We empirically test our model on a large dataset of U.S. infrastructure stocks in different subsectors (utility, telecommunication, and transportation) and over a long period of time (1983 to 2011). The new factor model is able to capture the variation of infrastructure returns better than the Fama/French three-factor, the Carhart four-factor or the extended Fung/Hsieh eight-factor models. Thus, our model helps to improve the evaluation of infrastructure funds and to better determine the cost of capital of infrastructure firms, something that is increasingly relevant in light of the growing need for privately financed infrastructure projects.

Due to their relatively high yields and low return correlations with traditional asset classes, insurance-linked securities (ILS) are often described as an attractive investment opportunity. Yet, the investor base for ILS is largely dominated by a few specialized investment managers. The aim of this paper is to analyze advantages and disadvantages, the current market development and the decision-making processes that drive the demand for this aspiring asset class. To reach this aim, we first review the existing knowledge on ILS instruments and markets, then present results of a new international survey among ILS Investors and finally, based on the results of the first and second step, derive implications for the future development of ILS. The key findings of our study can be summarized as follows: To date, transaction costs along with lacking experience / knowledge and regulatory uncertainty are the most significant impediments to ILS market expansion. Skin in the game is necessary to attract investors; we show that a 5 to 10% sponsor investment leads to large increases in the willingness to invest. We observe that investors do not consider ratings as necessary and that having no rating is better than having a bad rating. Overall, the ILS market is likely to grow substantially over the next years; the survey participants expect its volume to double by 2019. In this context, we discuss the role of new instruments such as protected cell companies and new types of risks such as cyber risk, high frequency risks or run-off risks.