IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/fip/fedhep/y2013iqiip47-78nv.37no.2.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The sensitivity of life insurance firms to interest rate changes

Author

Listed:
  • Kyal Berends
  • Robert McMenamin
  • Thanases Plestis
  • Richard J. Rosen

Abstract

The authors examine the interest rate risk of life insurers by estimating the sensitivity of their stock returns to changes in the return on bonds over a time frame that includes a relatively calm period before the recent financial crisis, the financial crisis itself, and the recent period of low interest rates. They find that when bonds increase in value (that is, when interest rates fall), stocks of large insurance firms decrease in value more than those of their smaller counterparts.

Suggested Citation

  • Kyal Berends & Robert McMenamin & Thanases Plestis & Richard J. Rosen, 2013. "The sensitivity of life insurance firms to interest rate changes," Economic Perspectives, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, vol. 37(Q II), pages 47-78.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedhep:y:2013:i:qii:p:47-78:n:v.37no.2
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.chicagofed.org/digital_assets/publications/economic_perspectives/2013/2Q2013_part2_berends_mcmenamin_plestis_rosen.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Flannery, Mark J & James, Christopher M, 1984. "The Effect of Interest Rate Changes on the Common Stock Returns of Financial Institutions," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 39(4), pages 1141-1153, September.
    2. Elijah Brewer & James M. Carson & Elyas Elyasiani & Iqbal Mansur & William L. Scott, 2007. "Interest Rate Risk and Equity Values of Life Insurance Companies: A GARCH–M Model," Journal of Risk & Insurance, The American Risk and Insurance Association, vol. 74(2), pages 401-423, June.
    3. Fama, Eugene F. & French, Kenneth R., 1993. "Common risk factors in the returns on stocks and bonds," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 33(1), pages 3-56, February.
    4. James M. Poterba, 1997. "The History of Annuities in the United States," NBER Working Papers 6001, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. James M. Carson & Elyas Elyasiani & Iqbal Mansur, 2008. "Market Risk, Interest Rate Risk, and Interdependencies in Insurer Stock Returns: A System‐GARCH Model," Journal of Risk & Insurance, The American Risk and Insurance Association, vol. 75(4), pages 873-891, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Kubitza, Christian & Grochola, Nicolaus & Gründl, Helmut, 2021. "Life insurance convexity," ICIR Working Paper Series 42/21, Goethe University Frankfurt, International Center for Insurance Regulation (ICIR).
    2. Donaldson, Jason Roderick & Piacentino, Giorgia, 2018. "Contracting to compete for flows," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 173(C), pages 289-319.
    3. Grochola, Nicolaus & Schlütter, Sebastian, 2023. "Discretionary decisions in capital requirements under Solvency II," ICIR Working Paper Series 50/23, Goethe University Frankfurt, International Center for Insurance Regulation (ICIR).
    4. Grochola, Nicolaus & Browne, Mark Joseph & Gründl, Helmut & Schlütter, Sebastian, 2021. "Exploring the market risk profiles of U.S. and European life insurers," ICIR Working Paper Series 39/21, Goethe University Frankfurt, International Center for Insurance Regulation (ICIR).
    5. Grochola, Nicolaus, 2023. "The influence of negative interest rates on life insurance companies," ICIR Working Paper Series 53/23, Goethe University Frankfurt, International Center for Insurance Regulation (ICIR).
    6. Kirti, Divya, 2024. "When gambling for resurrection is too risky," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 162(C).
    7. Liu, Hui-Hsuan & Chang, Ariana & Shiu, Yung-Ming, 2020. "Interest rate derivatives and risk exposure: Evidence from the life insurance industry," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 51(C).
    8. Axel Möhlmann, 2021. "Interest rate risk of life insurers: Evidence from accounting data," Financial Management, Financial Management Association International, vol. 50(2), pages 587-612, June.
    9. Mariya Gubareva, 2018. "Historical Interest Rate Sensitivity of Emerging Market Sovereign Debt: Evidence of Regime Dependent Behavior," Annals of Economics and Finance, Society for AEF, vol. 19(2), pages 405-442, November.
    10. Flores, Eduardo & de Carvalho, João Vinicius França & Sampaio, Joelson Oliveira, 2021. "Impact of interest rates on the life insurance market development: Cross-country evidence," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 58(C).
    11. Ching-Yuan Hsiao & Yung-Ming Shiu, 2019. "The effects of business mix on internal and external reinsurance usage," The Geneva Papers on Risk and Insurance - Issues and Practice, Palgrave Macmillan;The Geneva Association, vol. 44(4), pages 624-652, October.
    12. Dionne, Georges & Fenou, Akouété & Mnasri, Mohamed, 2024. "Insurers’ M&A in the United States during the 1990-2022 period: Is the Fed monetary policy a causal factor," Working Papers 24-2, HEC Montreal, Canada Research Chair in Risk Management, revised 16 Jul 2024.
    13. Focarelli, Dario, 2017. "Why Insurance Regulation is Crucial for Long-term Investment and Economic Growth," LEAP Working Papers 2017/1, Luiss Institute for European Analysis and Policy.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Daniel Hartley & Anna L. Paulson & Richard J. Rosen, 2016. "Measuring Interest Rate Risk in the Life Insurance Sector: The U.S. and the U.K," Working Paper Series WP-2016-2, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.
    2. Papadamou, Stephanos & Siriopoulos, Costas, 2014. "Interest rate risk and the creation of the Monetary Policy Committee: Evidence from banks’ and life insurance companies’ stocks in the UK," Journal of Economics and Business, Elsevier, vol. 71(C), pages 45-67.
    3. Ben Ammar, Semir & Eling, Martin & Milidonis, Andreas, 2015. "Asset Pricing of Financial Insitutions: The Cross-Section of Expected Stock Returns in the Property/Liability Insurance Industry," Working Papers on Finance 1516, University of St. Gallen, School of Finance.
    4. Robert N. Killins & Haiwei Chen, 2022. "The impact of the yield curve on the equity returns of insurance companies," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 27(1), pages 1134-1153, January.
    5. Tyler K. Jensen & Robert R. Johnson & Michael J. McNamara, 2019. "Funding conditions and insurance stock returns: Do insurance stocks really benefit from rising interest rate regimes?," Risk Management and Insurance Review, American Risk and Insurance Association, vol. 22(4), pages 367-391, December.
    6. Ben Ammar, Semir & Eling, Martin & Milidonis, Andreas, 2018. "The cross-section of expected stock returns in the property/liability insurance industry," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 96(C), pages 292-321.
    7. Andrea Flori & Fabrizio Lillo & Fabio Pammolli & Alessandro Spelta, 2021. "Better to stay apart: asset commonality, bipartite network centrality, and investment strategies," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 299(1), pages 177-213, April.
    8. Antonio Roma, 2006. "Common factors and balance sheet structure of major European banks," BNL Quarterly Review, Banca Nazionale del Lavoro, vol. 59(237), pages 123-170.
    9. Kiran Batool, 2021. "Impact of Interest Rates on Stock Index: Case of Pakistan Stock Exchange," International Journal of Business and Economic Affairs (IJBEA), Sana N. Maswadeh, vol. 6(1), pages 1-12.
    10. Carmichael, Benoît & Coën, Alain, 2020. "Real estate as a common risk factor in the financial sector: International evidence," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 32(C).
    11. Laura Ferrando & Román Ferrer & Francisco Jareño, 2017. "Interest Rate Sensitivity of Spanish Industries: A Quantile Regression Approach," Manchester School, University of Manchester, vol. 85(2), pages 212-242, March.
    12. Thomas Nitschka, 2016. "Is There a Too-Big-to-Fail Discount in Excess Returns on German Banks’ Stocks?," International Finance, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 19(3), pages 292-310, December.
    13. Scholtens, Bert & Dam, Lammertjan, 2007. "Banking on the Equator. Are Banks that Adopted the Equator Principles Different from Non-Adopters?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 35(8), pages 1307-1328, August.
    14. Elyas Elyasiani & Iftekhar Hasan & Elena Kalotychou & Panos K. Pouliasis & Sotiris K. Staikouras, 2020. "Banks’ equity performance and the term structure of interest rates," Financial Markets, Institutions & Instruments, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 29(2), pages 43-64, May.
    15. DE CEUSTER, Marc J.K. & LI, Jie & ZHANG, Hairui, 2012. "Did federal funds target rate changes affect the market value of insurance companies?," Working Papers 2012027, University of Antwerp, Faculty of Business and Economics.
    16. Grochola, Nicolaus & Browne, Mark Joseph & Gründl, Helmut & Schlütter, Sebastian, 2021. "Exploring the market risk profiles of U.S. and European life insurers," ICIR Working Paper Series 39/21, Goethe University Frankfurt, International Center for Insurance Regulation (ICIR).
    17. Elyas Elyasiani & Iqbal Mansur & Jill Wetmore, 2010. "Real-Estate Risk Effects on Financial Institutions’ Stock Return Distribution: a Bivariate GARCH Analysis," The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Springer, vol. 40(1), pages 89-107, January.
    18. Hippler, William J. & Hassan, M. Kabir, 2015. "The impact of macroeconomic and financial stress on the U.S. financial sector," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 21(C), pages 61-80.
    19. Antonio Roma, 2006. "Common factors and balance sheet structure of major European banks," Banca Nazionale del Lavoro Quarterly Review, Banca Nazionale del Lavoro, vol. 59(237), pages 123-170.
    20. Papadamou, Stephanos & Sidiropoulos, Moïse & Spyromitros, Eleftherios, 2017. "Interest rate dynamic effect on stock returns and central bank transparency: Evidence from emerging markets," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 39(PB), pages 951-962.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Life insurance companies; Interest rates;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:fip:fedhep:y:2013:i:qii:p:47-78:n:v.37no.2. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Lauren Wiese (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbchus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.