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The Productivity of European Life Insurers: Best-Practice Adoption vs. Innovation

Author

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  • Fabio Bertoni

    (Department of Management, Economics and Industrial Engineering, Politecnico di Milano—Piazza Leonardo da Vinci 32, Milan 20133, Italy. E-mails: fabio.bertoni@polimi.it; annalisa.croce@polimi.it)

  • Annalisa Croce

    (Department of Management, Economics and Industrial Engineering, Politecnico di Milano—Piazza Leonardo da Vinci 32, Milan 20133, Italy. E-mails: fabio.bertoni@polimi.it; annalisa.croce@polimi.it)

Abstract

The aim of this work is to investigate the drivers of productivity evolution in the European life insurance industry in the aftermath of the enforcement of the Third Directive. We apply Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to a panel of 602 life insurance companies operating in five European countries (Germany, France, Italy, Spain and the U.K.) between 1997 and 2004 and develop a generalized Malmquist efficiency decomposition to gauge the relative importance of two sources of productivity change: the improvement of best-practices via innovation, and the adoption of practices currently adopted by local or foreign best-in-class insurers. We find that productivity increased on an annual basis by 6.71 per cent; the increase has been mostly due to innovation in best-practices (6.67 per cent), while best-practice adoption contributed by a mere 0.04 per cent. Our findings also indicate that, over the period of our analysis, innovation of best-practices was attributable to technological change. We find no evidence, instead, that productivity has been driven by a shift in the risk profile of insurers.

Suggested Citation

  • Fabio Bertoni & Annalisa Croce, 2011. "The Productivity of European Life Insurers: Best-Practice Adoption vs. Innovation," The Geneva Papers on Risk and Insurance - Issues and Practice, Palgrave Macmillan;The Geneva Association, vol. 36(2), pages 165-185, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:pal:gpprii:v:36:y:2011:i:2:p:165-185
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    Cited by:

    1. Wanke, Peter & Barros, Carlos Pestana, 2016. "Efficiency drivers in Brazilian insurance: A two-stage DEA meta frontier-data mining approach," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 8-22.
    2. Kaffash, Sepideh & Azizi, Roza & Huang, Ying & Zhu, Joe, 2020. "A survey of data envelopment analysis applications in the insurance industry 1993–2018," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 284(3), pages 801-813.
    3. Maik Dehnert, 2020. "Sustaining the current or pursuing the new: incumbent digital transformation strategies in the financial service industry," Business Research, Springer;German Academic Association for Business Research, vol. 13(3), pages 1071-1113, November.
    4. Huang, Wei & Eling, Martin, 2013. "An efficiency comparison of the non-life insurance industry in the BRIC countries," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 226(3), pages 577-591.
    5. Carlos Pestana Barros & Silvestre Dumbo & Peter Wanke, 2014. "Efficiency Determinants and Capacity Issues in Angolan Insurance Companies," South African Journal of Economics, Economic Society of South Africa, vol. 82(3), pages 455-467, September.
    6. Reza Sanei & Farhad Hosseinzadeh lotfi & Mohammad Fallah & Farzad Movahedi Sobhani, 2022. "An Estimation of an Acceptable Efficiency Frontier Having an Optimum Resource Management Approach, with a Combination of the DEA-ANN-GA Technique (A Case Study of Branches of an Insurance Company)," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 10(23), pages 1-21, November.
    7. Biener, Christian & Eling, Martin & Wirfs, Jan Hendrik, 2016. "The determinants of efficiency and productivity in the Swiss insurance industry," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 248(2), pages 703-714.
    8. Qiao-Ming Lim & Hui-Shan Lee & Wai-Mun Har, 2021. "Efficiency, productivity and competitiveness of the Malaysian insurance sector: an analysis of risk-based capital regulation," The Geneva Papers on Risk and Insurance - Issues and Practice, Palgrave Macmillan;The Geneva Association, vol. 46(1), pages 146-172, January.
    9. Lada Shirinyan & Artur Shirinian, 2019. "Key Determinants of Efficiency of Functioning Insurance Market for Insurance Companies," Oblik i finansi, Institute of Accounting and Finance, issue 3, pages 122-128, September.
    10. Qiao-Ming Lim & Hui-Shan Lee & Wai-Mun Har, 0. "Efficiency, productivity and competitiveness of the Malaysian insurance sector: an analysis of risk-based capital regulation," The Geneva Papers on Risk and Insurance - Issues and Practice, Palgrave Macmillan;The Geneva Association, vol. 0, pages 1-27.
    11. Lung-Tan Lu, 2015. "Evaluating performance and efficiency of Asian banks," Journal of Financial Engineering (JFE), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 2(01), pages 1-16.
    12. Schaper, Philipp, 2017. "Under pressure: how the business environment affects productivity and efficiency of European life insurance companiesAuthor-Name: Eling, Martin," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 258(3), pages 1082-1094.

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