The Cost Efficiency of Takaful Insurance Companies

This study examines the cost efficiency of non-life Takaful insurance firms operating in 10 Islamic countries. Non-parametric data envelopment analysis is used to compute cost efficiency scores and a second-stage logit transformation regression model is then estimated to test the influence of corporate characteristics on these efficiencies. We find that non-executive directors and separating the Chief Executive Officer and Chairman functions do not improve cost efficiency. However, board size, firm size and product specialisation have positive effects on the cost efficiency of Takaful insurers. In contrast, the regulatory environment is found not to be statistically significant in terms of improving cost efficiency. We conclude that our results could have important commercial and policy implications.

The determinants of reinsurance in the Swedish property fire insurance market during the interwar years, 1919-39

Drawing a framework from agency theory, we use a panel data design to examine the factors motivating the level of demand for reinsurance in the rapidly developing Swedish property fire insurance market during the interwar period 1919-39. We find that as hypothesised, reinsurance enabled Swedish fire insurers to mitigate underwriting and solvency risks and thus increased their capacity to underwrite new business in uncertain economic times. This in turn helped to increase the supply of indemnity coverage for property (buildings) fire risks in the Swedish insurance market. We also find that as expected, investment earnings are inversely related to reinsurance purchases. However, contrary to what was hypothesised, reinsurance appears to be positively related to liquidity levels, suggesting that over our period of analysis, fire insurers could have been reinsuring to 'protect' earnings and accumulated cash reserves therefore enabling investment opportunities to be realised. Analysis of the sub-period 1919-28 further supports this contention, while our results for the economic depression years after 1929 show that reinsurance helped mitigate underwriting and insolvency risks, suggesting that the reinsurance decision of fire insurance companies could be motivated by macroeconomic factors.interwar period, Sweden, fire insurance, reinsurance,