This paper investigates an insurance market with adverse selection, moral hazard and across-contract endogeneity, under monopoly and perfect competition. We characterize the equilibrium in a market without endogeneity and study how the introduction of across-contract endogeneity into the model distorts the optimal contracts. The across-contract endogeneity can be viewed as a second source of endogeneity, in addition to moral hazard, that further reduces insurance coverage if the insurer considers its implication when choosing contracts. We show that a monopolist internalizes the externality exerted by the contracts and offers contracts with less coverage, which induce a lower level of average risk. Competitive insurers fail to account for the interdependence of risks and do not adjust accordingly. They offer excessive insurance, which leads to a higher level of average risk and creates inefficiency. Our analysis suggests that there is a trade-off between monopoly and perfect competition.
The focus of this thesis is on consumer diversity. Incorporating consumer heterogeneity into economic analysis is well-established in industrial organization literature; this aspect is, however, often neglected in microeconomic insurance models. A first new approach lies in analyzing risk interdependencies. When risks are interdependent, an agent's decision to self-protect affects the loss probabilities faced by others. Due to these externalities, economic agents invest too little in prevention relative to the socially efficient level by ignoring marginal external costs or benefits conferred on others. We analyze an insurance market with externalities of loss prevention. It is shown in a model with heterogenous agents and imperfect information that a monopolistic insurer can achieve the social optimum by engaging in premium discrimination. An insurance monopoly reduces not only costs of risk selection, but may also play an important social role in loss prevention. This result can be empirically confirmed. We also deal with the impact of intermediation on insurance market transparency and performance. In a differentiated insurance market under imperfect information, uninformed consumers may become informed about product suitability by consulting an intermediary. We analyze current broker compensation systems: commissions and fees. While insurers' equilibrium profits are equivalent under both systems, social welfare under fees is first-best efficient. Both systems may offer the opportunity to increase profits via collusion. Under a commission system, collusion enables insurers to separate consumers into groups purchasing different contracts. Insurers may then extract additional rents from some consumers. This might explain why intermediaries tend to be compensated by insurers in practice. Finally, we study optimal monopoly pricing given imperfect information and heterogenous policyholders. Die in englischer Sprache verfasste Arbeit ist der mikroökonomischen Analyse von Versicherungsmärkten gewidmet. Zunächst werden einige wichtige theoretische Grundlagen der Versicherungsnachfragetheorie beschrieben. Eine zentrale Erweiterung des Basismodells stellen interdependente Risiken dar. Bestehen Risikointerdependenzen, so sind alle Maßnahmen, die die Schadenshäufigkeit reduzieren, mit positiven externen Effekten verbunden. Es wird gezeigt, dass im Gleichgewicht das realisierte Präventionsniveau unterhalb des optimalen Niveaus angesiedelt ist. Aufgrund der Externalitäten kommt es zu einem Marktversagen und nur ein Monopolversicherer kann eine differenzierte Prämienstruktur herbeiführen, die zum optimalen Präventionsniveau führt. Dieses Ergebnis kollidiert mit dem Ergebnis, dass wettbewerbliche Versicherungsmärkte zu einer höheren Gesamtwohlfahrt führen, es lässt sich jedoch empirisch stützen. Ein weiterer Schwerpunkt der Arbeit liegt auf unvollkommenen Versicherungsmärkten, wobei heterogene Versicherungsnachfrager mit unterschiedlichen Produktpräferenzen und Informationskosten unterstellt werden. In einem solchen Markt erhöhen Versicherungsvermittler die Markttransparenz und damit auch die Gewinne der Versicherer. Im Mittelpunkt steht die Analyse verschiedener Vergütungsformen der Vermittler. Ein Vergütungssystem auf Basis von Beratungshonoraren ist einem Provisionssystem aus wohlfahrtsökonomischer Perspektive vorzuziehen. Aus Sicht der Versicherer kehrt sich dieses Ergebnis allerdings um, sobald es zur Kollusion zwischen Versicherern und Vermittlern kommt. Der letzte Schwerpunkt liegt in der Analyse einer optimalen Preispolitik eines Versicherungsmonopolisten bei heterogenen Nachfragern, die sich durch ihre Risikopräferenzen und damit ihre individuelle Zahlungsbereitschaft für Versicherungen unterscheiden.
Economic and financial research on insurance markets has undergone dramatic growth since its infancy in the early 1960s. Our main objective in compiling this volume was to achieve a wider dissemination of key papers in this literature. Their significance is highlighted in the introduction, which surveys major areas in insurance economics. While it was not possible to provide comprehensive coverage of insurance economics in this book, these readings provide an essential foundation to those who desire to conduct research and teach in the field. In particular, we hope that this compilation and our introduction will be useful to graduate students and to researchers in economics, finance, and insurance. Our criteria for selecting articles included significance, representativeness, pedagogical value, and our desire to include theoretical and empirical work. While the focus of the applied papers is on property-liability insurance, they illustrate issues, concepts, and methods that are applicable in many areas of insurance. The S. S. Huebner Foundation for Insurance Education at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School made this book possible by financing publication costs. We are grateful for this assistance and to J. David Cummins, Executive Director of the Foundation, for his efforts and helpful advice on the contents. We also wish to thank all of the authors and editors who provided permission to reprint articles and our respective institutions for technical and financial support.
The book brings together academics, regulators, and industry experts to provide a multifaceted array of research and perspectives on insurance, its role and functioning, and the potential systemic risk it could create.
"Luca Albertini and Pauline Barrieu are to be congratulated on this volume. Written in a period where structured projects in finance are having a difficult time, it is worthwhile to return to the cradle of securitisation: insurance. Spread out over three parts (life, non- life, and tax and regulatory issues) the 26 chapters, written mainly by practitioners, give an excellent overview of this challenging field of modern insurance. Methodology and examples nicely go hand in hand. The overall slant being towards actual analyses of concrete products. No doubt this book will become a milestone going forward for actuarial students, researchers, regulators and practitioners alike." —Paul Embrechts, Professor of Mathematics and Director of RiskLab, ETH Zurich The convergence of insurance with the capital markets has opened up an alternative channel for insurers to transfer risk, raise capital and optimize their regulatory reserves as well as offering institutions a source of relatively liquid investment with limited correlation with other exposures. One of the financial instruments allowing for the cession of insurance-related risks to the capital markets is Insurance-Linked Securities (ILS). This book provides hands-on information essential for market participants, drawing on the insights and expertise of an impressive team of international market players, representing the various aspects and perspectives of this growing sector. The book presents the state of the art in Insurance-Linked Securitization, by exploring the various roles for the different parties involved in the transactions, the motivation for the transaction sponsors, the potential inherent pitfalls, the latest developments and transaction structures and the key challenges faced by the market. The book is organized into parts, each covering a specific topic or sector of the market. After a general overview of the ILS market, the Insurance-Linked Securitization process is studied in detail. A distinction is made between non-life and life securitization, due to the specificities of each sector. The process and all the actors involved are identified and considered in a comprehensive and systematic way. The concepts are first looked at in a general way, before the analysis of relevant case studies where the ILS technology is applied. Particular focus is given to: the key stages in both non-life and life securitizations, including the general features of the transactions, the cedant's perspectives, the legal issues, the rating methodologies, the choice of an appropriate trigger and the risk modeling, the particular challenges related to longevity securitization, the investor's perspective and the question of the management of a portfolio of ILS, the general issues related to insurance-linked securitization, such as accounting and tax issues, regulatory issues and solvency capital requirements. The book is accompanied by a website www.wiley.com/go/albertini_barrieu_ILS which will feature updates and additions to the various contributions to follow market developments.
Securitized Insurance Risk is one of the first books to focus exclusively on the convergence of the insurance and financial markets in risk management and the emergence of insurance risk as a non-correlated asset class. Written for insurers and investors alike, this book explores the opportunities available to forward-looking risk and investment managers. Chapters by prominent experts specifically address: the win-win principle behind securitizing insurance risk; current structures, including catastrophe bonds, structured notes, catastrophe options, and swaps; partnering financial market tools with traditional reinsurance programs; holding insurance risk, uncorrelated with stocks and bonds; pricing insurance risk instruments and evaluating basic risk; and regulatory and accounting concerns.
Author: United States. Congress. House. Committee on Financial Services. Subcommittee on Capital Markets, Insurance, and Government Sponsored Enterprises
Many risks face the global insurance industry today, including the aging populations of developed countries, competition from other financial institutions, and both disparate and quickly changing regulatory demands, to name a few. The book s contributors offer their unique perspectives on challenges confronting the insurance industry and how attendant risks can be most effectively managed.
This book provides an introduction to the theory and practice of cyber insurance. Insurance as an economic instrument designed for risk management through risk spreading has existed for centuries. Cyber insurance is one of the newest sub-categories of this old instrument. It emerged in the 1990s in response to an increasing impact that information security started to have on business operations. For much of its existence, the practice of cyber insurance has been on how to obtain accurate actuarial information to inform specifics of a cyber insurance contract. As the cybersecurity threat landscape continues to bring about novel forms of attacks and losses, ransomware insurance being the latest example, the insurance practice is also evolving in terms of what types of losses are covered, what are excluded, and how cyber insurance intersects with traditional casualty and property insurance. The central focus, however, has continued to be risk management through risk transfer, the key functionality of insurance. The goal of this book is to shift the focus from this conventional view of using insurance as primarily a risk management mechanism to one of risk control and reduction by looking for ways to re-align the incentives. On this front we have encouraging results that suggest the validity of using insurance as an effective economic and incentive tool to control cyber risk. This book is intended for someone interested in obtaining a quantitative understanding of cyber insurance and how innovation is possible around this centuries-old financial instrument.
