It is widely accepted that mortality risk varies across individuals within age-sex bands of a population. This heterogeneity exposes insurers to adverse selection if only the healthiest lives purchase annuities, so standard annuities are priced with a mortality table that assumes above-average...

This paper examines the impact of a company's pension contributions on its dividend and investment policies. The effects of shocks to cash flows on these corporate expenditures are identified by changes to pension funding regulations. Using a sample of DB pension schemes in FTSE350 UK listed...

Standard measures of economies of scale and scope show that size does matter for German investment management companies. The average investment management company faces an increase in costs of 0.71% for a 1% increase in assets under management. Small to mid-sized companies in our example exhibit...

This study examines the financial fragility of the Retail Non-Banking Financial Companies (Retail-NBFCs) sector. We show that the liquidity crunch in Retail-NBFCs stemmed from their over-dependence on short-term wholesale funding from Liquid Debt Mutual Funds (LDMFs) and the low level of...

This paper investigates the effect of changes in state prudent trust investment laws on asset allocation in noncommercial trusts. The old prudent-man rule favored quot;safequot; investments and disfavored quot;speculationquot; in stock. The new prudent-investor rule directs trustees to craft an...

This paper assesses whether long-term institutional investors help stabilise or destabilise Hong Kong and international stock markets. We use a novel dataset based on individual funds issued by insurance companies and pension funds worldwide. This allows us to examine each economic region in...

Despite the conspicuous explosion of digital banking, mobile banking, fintech startups and the implications of AI adoption, there is a relative dearth of empirical studies that provide a quantitative analysis of the impact of the Fintech on banks' financial performance. Instead there is a...

This study utilizes recent developments in panel data techniques to evaluate whether the smoothing of pension expenses is neutral in its long-term effect on reported earnings. Adopting a long-term perspective, the empirical analysis also identifies sources of potential deviations. Results...

This paper shows that the characteristics of convertible bond funds (CBFs) differ considerably based on the regional asset allocation of the fund. More specifically, U.S. CBF returns correlate more strongly with equity returns, while European and Asian CBFs returns show a higher correlation with...