Rather than taking on more risk, US insurers hit hard by the crisis pulled back from risk taking, relative to insurers hit less hard by the crisis. Capital requirements alone do not explain this risk reduction: insurers hit hard reduced risk within assets with identical regulatory treatment....

We test the hypothesis that practicing Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) reduces firms' cost of reducing risk. Adoption of ERM represents a radical paradigm shift from the traditional method of managing risks individually to managing risks collectively allowing ERM-adopting firms to better...

Life insurers massively sell savings contracts with surrender options which allow policyholders to withdraw a guaranteed amount before maturity. These options move toward the money when interest rates rise. Using data on German life insurers, we estimate that a 1 percentage point increase in...

Life insurers sell savings contracts with surrender options, allowing policyholders to prematurely withdraw guaranteed surrender values. Surrender options move toward the money when interest rates rise. Hence, higher interest rates raise surrender rates, as we document for the German life...

Homeowners’ insurance provides households financial protection from climate losses. To improve access and affordability, state regulators impose price controls on insurance companies. Using novel data, we construct a new measure of rate setting frictions for individual states and show that...

Homeowners’ insurance, a $15 trillion market by coverage, provides households financial protection from climate losses. Insurance premiums (rates) are subject to significant regulations at a state level in the United States. Using novel data on filings made by insurers to regulators, we...

The paper analyzes the use of credit default swaps (CDS) for regulatory capital relief and its consequences for systemic risk. Equity capital acts as a buffer against losses, and reduces incentives for excessive risk taking. Basel capital regulation states that banks can lower capital...

We examine the systemic risk of 61 SIFIs (i.e., 33 G-SIBs and 28 IAIGs) between 2010 and 2023. We estimate SIFI’s CoVaR using a single index model with LASSO variable selection and construct a set of tail risk network-based systemic risk measures for SIFIs. The results show that two shocks...

The insurance industry could potentially play a greater constructive role in mitigating climate risk by aligning with entities that scrupulously incorporate environmental, social, and governance (ESG) aspects in their business philosophy

Climate risk impacts the insurance industry on both sides of the balance sheets. On the one hand, rising weather-related claims are affecting the liability side. At the same time, there is an increasing expectation from investors, shareholders, customers and other stakeholders for insurers to...