This paper examines the relationship between mergers & acquisitions (M &a... more This paper examines the relationship between mergers & acquisitions (M & As), diversification and financial performance in the U.S. property-liability insurance industry over the period 1989–2004. The risk-adjusted return on assets (ROA), return on equity (ROE), Z-score and total risk measured by earnings volatility are considered as a relevant indicator of performance. We find that acquirers’ financial performance decreases and
This paper examines empirically the impact of mergers and acquisitions on the capital allocation ... more This paper examines empirically the impact of mergers and acquisitions on the capital allocation of newly formed insurers as well as on changes in the price of insurance across lines of business of those insurers in the U.S. property-liability insurance industry over the sample period 1995-2004. Our analysis is guided by the theoretical propositions set forth in Froot and Stein (1998) and in the capital allocation literature (Myers and Read, 2001) which predicts the prices of illiquid risks depend upon the firm’s capital structure, the covariance of an individual line of insurance relative to the riskiness of firm’s entire portfolio, and marginal capital allocated to the line of business. This paper also investigate whether changes in the price of insurance reflect overall capital costs as well as new marginal capital allocation across lines in the newly formed insurer. We find that M & A leads to reduction in capital requirement (capital-to-liability ratio), lowering the price of i...
This paper examines whether the choice of bank loan diversification and market concentration are ... more This paper examines whether the choice of bank loan diversification and market concentration are associated with a bank's financial stability. This study also investigates how the effect of loan diversification on bank stability varies depending on the level of the concentration or the competitiveness of the banking market. We find that increased loan diversification has a positive impact on the bank's financial strength. We show that market concentration is negatively associated with bank insolvency risk, consistent with the “concentration-stability” view. The results using interaction terms between loan portfolio diversification and market concentration indicate that diversifying banks operating in highly concentrated markets are more financially stable compared to those in less concentrated markets.
The article investigates whether the market concentration is associated with an insurer's fin... more The article investigates whether the market concentration is associated with an insurer's financial stability in the U.S. property–liability insurance industry over the period 1992–2010. We employ two-stage least squares techniques with instrumental variables to address likely endogeneity problems. The results show that higher market concentration is associated with lower financial stability of insurance firms, consistent with the “concentration-fragility” view. Our results indicate that firm-specific characteristics including firm size, underwriting leverage, organizational form, product and geographical diversification, along with the exposure to natural catastrophes and macroeconomic conditions are important determinants in ensuring a safe and sound insurance system. Robustness tests using various estimation methods and alternative measures of financial stability present consistent results.
We examine the incentive effects of CEO inside debt holdings (pensions and deferred compensation)... more We examine the incentive effects of CEO inside debt holdings (pensions and deferred compensation) on risk taking using the sample of U.S. publicly traded property–liability insurers. To represent managerial risk taking, we employ value at risk (VaR) and expected shortfall (ES), which capture extreme movements in the lower tail of insurer stock return distribution. We also estimate firm default risk, equity volatilities, and insurance-related risk as alternative measures of risk taking. We document that inside debt represents a significant component of CEOs’ compensation in the insurance industry. We find that there is a significant and negative relationship between CEO inside debt holdings and risk-taking behavior. The results suggest that the structure of executive debt-like compensation could be a potential method of reducing managers’ risk-taking incentives.
This study examines diversification-performance relationship in the U.S. property-liability insur... more This study examines diversification-performance relationship in the U.S. property-liability insurance industry over the period of 1996–2010. Unlike prior studies that rely on the conditional mean estimation method, we employ quantile regression, which captures the heterogeneous effects of diversification on conditional return distribution. The results show that diversification does not necessarily drive down risk-adjusted returns and its effects vary along return distribution. We find that there is a diversification discount for firms in the lower levels of return distribution, whereas a diversification premium exists for firms in the upper levels of return distribution. We provide evidence that the relations between risk-adjusted returns and other explanatory variables are not constant, but vary over the quantiles of return distribution. Our results are robust to alternative measures of an insurer’s performance and product diversification.
ABSTRACT The choice of an appropriate dependence structure in modelling multivariate risks is an ... more ABSTRACT The choice of an appropriate dependence structure in modelling multivariate risks is an important issue because different tail structure embedded in copula leads to a different capital requirement for the institution. We present how to select a well-specified dependence structure to given application data. Using a simple simulation technique, we develop a statistical test to assess the adequacy of a specific dependence structure. We examine the sensitivity of risk estimates to the choice of copulas using the S&P 500 and FTSE 100 stock indices.
Copulas can be a useful tool to capture heavy-tailed dependence between risks in estimating econo... more Copulas can be a useful tool to capture heavy-tailed dependence between risks in estimating economic capital. This paper provides a procedure of combining copula with GARCH model to construct a multivariate distribution. The copula-based GARCH model using a skewed student’s t-distribution controls for the issues of skewness, heavy tails, volatility clustering and conditional dependencies contained in the financial time series data. Using the sample of U.S. property liability insurance industry, we perform Monte Carlo simulation to estimate the insurer’s economic capital measured by Value-at-Risk (VaR) and Expected Shortfall (ES). The result indicates that the choice of dependence structure and business mix between asset classes and liability lines has a significant impact on the resulting capital requirements and diversification benefits. We find the incremental diversification benefit in terms of a reduction in the total capital requirement from the joint modeling of underwriting r...
International Journal of Business and Economics, 2010
This paper proposes a copula that has versatile properties. We apply grouped t and versatile t co... more This paper proposes a copula that has versatile properties. We apply grouped t and versatile t copulas to estimate Value at Risk and expected shortfall using a sample of firms in the US property-liability insurance industry. We perform goodness-of-fit tests to assess the adequacy of the copula models selected. We find that a versatile copula is effective in estimating dependence structures of non-homogeneous multivariate risks.
ABSTRACT It is important to incorporate diverse heavy-tailed dependency between risks in estimati... more ABSTRACT It is important to incorporate diverse heavy-tailed dependency between risks in estimating economic capital. Copulas can be a useful technique to capture dependence structure where extreme events occur simultaneously. Using the sample of U.S. property liability insurance industry, we examine the impact of different dependence structure between market risk and underwriting risk of insurance portfolio on the economic capital measured by Value-at-Risk (VaR) and Expected Shortfall (ES). We identify the type of copula that best fits the given application data and perform a goodness of fit test to assess the adequacy of the copula model selected. The results suggest that the grouped t copula is better performed than the standard t copula to describe the dependence structure in an insurance setting where different type of risk factors coexists. The result also shows the incremental diversification benefit in the joint modeling of underwriting risk and market risk compared to the modeling of market risk only considered, indicating that both risks diversify against one another to some degree.
The relationship between macroeconomic developments and bank capital buffer and portfolio risk ad... more The relationship between macroeconomic developments and bank capital buffer and portfolio risk adjustments is relevant to assess the efficacy of newly created countercyclical buffer requirements. Using the U.S. bank holding company data over the period 1992:Q1–2011:Q3, we find a negative relationship between the business cycle and capital buffer. Our results offer some support for the Basel III agreements that countercyclical capital buffer in the banking sector is necessary to help the performance of the real economy during recessions. We find a robust evidence of inverse relationship between business cycle and bank default risk. Our analysis provides evidence of diversification benefits. The probability of insolvency risk decreases for diversified banks and banks with high revenue diversity achieve capital savings.
This paper examines the impact of capital-based regulation on the insurer's risk and capital adju... more This paper examines the impact of capital-based regulation on the insurer's risk and capital adjustments in the US property-liability insurance industry. We conduct the three-stage least squares (3SLS) procedure to estimate a simultaneous equations model. The key finding is that undercapitalized insurers increase capital to avoid regulatory costs and take more risks to generate higher returns. We also investigate firm characteristics that determine the insurer's capital structure. The results indicate that insurers appear to rely heavily on retained earnings to make up their capital shortage and insurers with greater growth opportunity may hold high levels of capital to control for agency problems. Robustness tests with an alternative risk measure and subsamples present consistent results.
This paper examines the relationship between mergers & acquisitions (M & As), diversification and... more This paper examines the relationship between mergers & acquisitions (M & As), diversification and financial performance in the U.S. property-liability insurance industry over the period 1989–2004. The risk-adjusted return on assets (ROA), return on equity (ROE), Z-score and total risk measured by earnings volatility are considered as a relevant indicator of performance. We find that acquirers’ financial performance decreases and earnings volatility increases during the gestation period after the M & As perhaps due to increased frictional costs associated with post-merger integration and agency problems. We find that more focused insurers outperform the product-diversified insurers, implying that the costs of diversification outweigh the benefits. These findings are robust to alternative risk and diversification measures. We also find that marginal increases in commercial line share are associated with higher risk-adjusted profits, but these gains are offset by the extra costs from p...
This paper examines the relationship between mergers & acquisitions (M &a... more This paper examines the relationship between mergers & acquisitions (M & As), diversification and financial performance in the U.S. property-liability insurance industry over the period 1989–2004. The risk-adjusted return on assets (ROA), return on equity (ROE), Z-score and total risk measured by earnings volatility are considered as a relevant indicator of performance. We find that acquirers’ financial performance decreases and
This paper examines empirically the impact of mergers and acquisitions on the capital allocation ... more This paper examines empirically the impact of mergers and acquisitions on the capital allocation of newly formed insurers as well as on changes in the price of insurance across lines of business of those insurers in the U.S. property-liability insurance industry over the sample period 1995-2004. Our analysis is guided by the theoretical propositions set forth in Froot and Stein (1998) and in the capital allocation literature (Myers and Read, 2001) which predicts the prices of illiquid risks depend upon the firm’s capital structure, the covariance of an individual line of insurance relative to the riskiness of firm’s entire portfolio, and marginal capital allocated to the line of business. This paper also investigate whether changes in the price of insurance reflect overall capital costs as well as new marginal capital allocation across lines in the newly formed insurer. We find that M & A leads to reduction in capital requirement (capital-to-liability ratio), lowering the price of i...
This paper examines whether the choice of bank loan diversification and market concentration are ... more This paper examines whether the choice of bank loan diversification and market concentration are associated with a bank's financial stability. This study also investigates how the effect of loan diversification on bank stability varies depending on the level of the concentration or the competitiveness of the banking market. We find that increased loan diversification has a positive impact on the bank's financial strength. We show that market concentration is negatively associated with bank insolvency risk, consistent with the “concentration-stability” view. The results using interaction terms between loan portfolio diversification and market concentration indicate that diversifying banks operating in highly concentrated markets are more financially stable compared to those in less concentrated markets.
The article investigates whether the market concentration is associated with an insurer's fin... more The article investigates whether the market concentration is associated with an insurer's financial stability in the U.S. property–liability insurance industry over the period 1992–2010. We employ two-stage least squares techniques with instrumental variables to address likely endogeneity problems. The results show that higher market concentration is associated with lower financial stability of insurance firms, consistent with the “concentration-fragility” view. Our results indicate that firm-specific characteristics including firm size, underwriting leverage, organizational form, product and geographical diversification, along with the exposure to natural catastrophes and macroeconomic conditions are important determinants in ensuring a safe and sound insurance system. Robustness tests using various estimation methods and alternative measures of financial stability present consistent results.
We examine the incentive effects of CEO inside debt holdings (pensions and deferred compensation)... more We examine the incentive effects of CEO inside debt holdings (pensions and deferred compensation) on risk taking using the sample of U.S. publicly traded property–liability insurers. To represent managerial risk taking, we employ value at risk (VaR) and expected shortfall (ES), which capture extreme movements in the lower tail of insurer stock return distribution. We also estimate firm default risk, equity volatilities, and insurance-related risk as alternative measures of risk taking. We document that inside debt represents a significant component of CEOs’ compensation in the insurance industry. We find that there is a significant and negative relationship between CEO inside debt holdings and risk-taking behavior. The results suggest that the structure of executive debt-like compensation could be a potential method of reducing managers’ risk-taking incentives.
This study examines diversification-performance relationship in the U.S. property-liability insur... more This study examines diversification-performance relationship in the U.S. property-liability insurance industry over the period of 1996–2010. Unlike prior studies that rely on the conditional mean estimation method, we employ quantile regression, which captures the heterogeneous effects of diversification on conditional return distribution. The results show that diversification does not necessarily drive down risk-adjusted returns and its effects vary along return distribution. We find that there is a diversification discount for firms in the lower levels of return distribution, whereas a diversification premium exists for firms in the upper levels of return distribution. We provide evidence that the relations between risk-adjusted returns and other explanatory variables are not constant, but vary over the quantiles of return distribution. Our results are robust to alternative measures of an insurer’s performance and product diversification.
ABSTRACT The choice of an appropriate dependence structure in modelling multivariate risks is an ... more ABSTRACT The choice of an appropriate dependence structure in modelling multivariate risks is an important issue because different tail structure embedded in copula leads to a different capital requirement for the institution. We present how to select a well-specified dependence structure to given application data. Using a simple simulation technique, we develop a statistical test to assess the adequacy of a specific dependence structure. We examine the sensitivity of risk estimates to the choice of copulas using the S&P 500 and FTSE 100 stock indices.
Copulas can be a useful tool to capture heavy-tailed dependence between risks in estimating econo... more Copulas can be a useful tool to capture heavy-tailed dependence between risks in estimating economic capital. This paper provides a procedure of combining copula with GARCH model to construct a multivariate distribution. The copula-based GARCH model using a skewed student’s t-distribution controls for the issues of skewness, heavy tails, volatility clustering and conditional dependencies contained in the financial time series data. Using the sample of U.S. property liability insurance industry, we perform Monte Carlo simulation to estimate the insurer’s economic capital measured by Value-at-Risk (VaR) and Expected Shortfall (ES). The result indicates that the choice of dependence structure and business mix between asset classes and liability lines has a significant impact on the resulting capital requirements and diversification benefits. We find the incremental diversification benefit in terms of a reduction in the total capital requirement from the joint modeling of underwriting r...
International Journal of Business and Economics, 2010
This paper proposes a copula that has versatile properties. We apply grouped t and versatile t co... more This paper proposes a copula that has versatile properties. We apply grouped t and versatile t copulas to estimate Value at Risk and expected shortfall using a sample of firms in the US property-liability insurance industry. We perform goodness-of-fit tests to assess the adequacy of the copula models selected. We find that a versatile copula is effective in estimating dependence structures of non-homogeneous multivariate risks.
ABSTRACT It is important to incorporate diverse heavy-tailed dependency between risks in estimati... more ABSTRACT It is important to incorporate diverse heavy-tailed dependency between risks in estimating economic capital. Copulas can be a useful technique to capture dependence structure where extreme events occur simultaneously. Using the sample of U.S. property liability insurance industry, we examine the impact of different dependence structure between market risk and underwriting risk of insurance portfolio on the economic capital measured by Value-at-Risk (VaR) and Expected Shortfall (ES). We identify the type of copula that best fits the given application data and perform a goodness of fit test to assess the adequacy of the copula model selected. The results suggest that the grouped t copula is better performed than the standard t copula to describe the dependence structure in an insurance setting where different type of risk factors coexists. The result also shows the incremental diversification benefit in the joint modeling of underwriting risk and market risk compared to the modeling of market risk only considered, indicating that both risks diversify against one another to some degree.
The relationship between macroeconomic developments and bank capital buffer and portfolio risk ad... more The relationship between macroeconomic developments and bank capital buffer and portfolio risk adjustments is relevant to assess the efficacy of newly created countercyclical buffer requirements. Using the U.S. bank holding company data over the period 1992:Q1–2011:Q3, we find a negative relationship between the business cycle and capital buffer. Our results offer some support for the Basel III agreements that countercyclical capital buffer in the banking sector is necessary to help the performance of the real economy during recessions. We find a robust evidence of inverse relationship between business cycle and bank default risk. Our analysis provides evidence of diversification benefits. The probability of insolvency risk decreases for diversified banks and banks with high revenue diversity achieve capital savings.
This paper examines the impact of capital-based regulation on the insurer's risk and capital adju... more This paper examines the impact of capital-based regulation on the insurer's risk and capital adjustments in the US property-liability insurance industry. We conduct the three-stage least squares (3SLS) procedure to estimate a simultaneous equations model. The key finding is that undercapitalized insurers increase capital to avoid regulatory costs and take more risks to generate higher returns. We also investigate firm characteristics that determine the insurer's capital structure. The results indicate that insurers appear to rely heavily on retained earnings to make up their capital shortage and insurers with greater growth opportunity may hold high levels of capital to control for agency problems. Robustness tests with an alternative risk measure and subsamples present consistent results.
This paper examines the relationship between mergers & acquisitions (M & As), diversification and... more This paper examines the relationship between mergers & acquisitions (M & As), diversification and financial performance in the U.S. property-liability insurance industry over the period 1989–2004. The risk-adjusted return on assets (ROA), return on equity (ROE), Z-score and total risk measured by earnings volatility are considered as a relevant indicator of performance. We find that acquirers’ financial performance decreases and earnings volatility increases during the gestation period after the M & As perhaps due to increased frictional costs associated with post-merger integration and agency problems. We find that more focused insurers outperform the product-diversified insurers, implying that the costs of diversification outweigh the benefits. These findings are robust to alternative risk and diversification measures. We also find that marginal increases in commercial line share are associated with higher risk-adjusted profits, but these gains are offset by the extra costs from p...
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