We use stock return data to investigate the effects of the First Executive (FE) failure on other life insurance firms. In contrast to previous studies, we explicitly test for the separate effects of individual (retail) and institutional customer responses. The announcement of an accounting...

As a result of Solvency II, academics and practitioners anticipate further consolidation in the insurance industry as the new regulatory framework rewards well-diversified insurers with lower capital requirements and challenges smaller insurers to meet the (operational) regulatory requirements....

The existing replication policies at top finance journals are far weaker than the policies at top economics journals. This paper explores both the costs and benefits of having a stronger replication policy in the context of my failed 2010 initiative to develop a unified policy across all top...

This paper utilizes option pricing theory to analyze bank stock prices, as one method of estimating fair variable deposit insurance premium rates in accordance with individual bank default risk, and conducts empirical analyses using Japanese data.The purpose of the analyses is to discuss the...

In 2008, AIG found itself on the brink of failure and required the Federal Reserve to step in with billions of dollars of taxpayer money. The causes of AIG's collapse have been described in numerous articles and official reports since then. Albeit some nuances, all analyzes point to AIG's credit...

The topic of insolvency risk in connection with life insurance companies has recently attracted a great deal of attention. In this paper, the question is investigated of how the value of the equity and of the liability of a life insurance company are affected by the default risk and the choice...

Purpose - Despite the sophisticated regulatory regime established in Solvency II, analysts should be able to consider other less complex indicators of the soundness of insurers. The Z-score measure, which has traditionally been used as a proxy of individual risk in the banking sector, may be a...

Life insurers typically grant policyholders a surrender option. We demonstrate that the resulting lapse risk could materialise in the form of a "policyholder run" if interest rates were to increase sharply. An inverse stress test based on a unique set of regulatory panel data suggests that...

One of the important consequences to be drawn from the course of the financial crisis up to now is the insight that more attention must be paid in the future to the factors of liquidity, liquidity management and liquidity protection. That holds true for the protection of the stability of an...