Until its liberalisation in 1994 exclusive agents dominated the distribution of products in the German life insurance …-channel distribution firms in the German life insurance. Thus, we are able to explain the development and the coexistence of the industries …' distribution systems. Our study contributes to research on coexistence of different distribution systems in insurance industry …

The German insurance market was liberalized in 1994 by the introduction of the "single passport" allowing European … insurers to operate throughout the entire European Union. The European directive put also an end to price and insurance … contract terms regulation. These measures were meant for removing the obstacles to competition within and between the insurance …

can be used to self-insure, substituting for both formal and informal insurance. We investigate this question using a … remittances, which supports the idea that remittances act as (self-) insurance. We also show that purchasing formal funeral cover … is influenced by other risk management strategies and that determinants of informal insurance differ from those of formal …