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This study examines the possible nonlinear effect of size on stakeholder and shareholder profitability in the Ghanaian insurance brokerage industry.

This study employs a panel dataset of 64 Ghanaian insurance brokerage firms spanning 2011–2015. Static [ordinary least squares (OLS), fixed effect and random effect and dynamic (two-step generalized method of moments (GMM))] estimation techniques are employed to analyze the data.

The study finds the existence of both economies and diseconomies of scale and scope theories in the Ghanaian insurance brokerage industry confirming the existence of nonlinear nexus between size and performance. This finding is consistent for both stakeholder and shareholder profit performance. Thus, the results show that size improves profitability of insurance brokerage firms, but beyond a certain threshold, the relationship turns negative as size negatively affects profitability.

The research findings have implications for both policy and research; the study recommends that Ghanaian brokerage managers should understand that not all growth is good and exercise a duty of care when applying growth strategies by monitoring size effect on performance so as not to go beyond the inflection point. Further research can be done to examine this effect in other contexts, timeframes and jurisdictions.

This research is unique in that it employs a panel dataset consisting of 96% of insurance brokerage firms in Ghana whilst employing both static and nonstatic regression models to examine the effect of size. The research analysis adopted is robust, and the findings are significant. Also, the lack of empirical studies on the operations and dealings of auxiliary institutions such as the insurance brokerage firms adds value to this research.

Occasional, highly publicized examples of unethical behavior by executives of major businesses such as the unethical/illegal brokerage and financial reporting practices uncovered recently by New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer's investigation of the insurance industry may be thought to have arisen from some rather unique set of ethical problems that differ significantly from the ethical dilemmas encountered daily by those working in the business. In reality, they did not. Instead, these highly publicized unethical activities on the part of leading brokerage firms and insurers are shown to be attributable to several of the same key ethical issues identified repeatedly by insurance professionals as presenting the greatest ethical challenges for those working in the insurance industry over the last decade and a half.

Strategic planning has become an indispensable tool for management, and while its effectiveness is widely assumed, its contribution is rarely quantified. In order to assess the value of strategic decision making in terms of its contribution to a firm’s sales, net income, and earnings, Leon Reinharth and his associates have prepared a case study of the 10‐step strategic planning process undertaken about seven years ago by a leading multinational insurance brokerage company. The firm is Alexander & Alexander Services, Inc., a highly profitable organization both before and after implementation of its 1976 strategic plan. Readers can draw their own conclusions about the order of magnitude of the plan’s value by comparing the financial results of two five‐year periods in the firm’s history (see Table 3). The benchmark period, 1970 through 1974, was the pre‐plan era, and the years 1976 through 1980 are the ones Dr. Reinharth believes were most affected by the plan. There is some evidence that the firm’s strategic decision making capabilities gave it a definite competitive advantage. A 1979 Fortune survey found that among the five largest publicly held insurance borkerage firms in the United States, A&A had the highest average return on equity from 1975 to 1977 and the highest average annual growth in dividends from 1973 to 1978. Dr. Reinharth’s case study outlines the problems that A&A identified in 1976 and summarizes the management philosophy that guided the strategic responses of the plan. For a detailed version of this case history the reader is directed to The Practice of Planning, by the authors, and published by Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, 1981. The most recently reported financial results for A&A are presented in the separate section, Alexander and Alexander in 1981.

The purpose of this paper is to examine brokers' financial incentives in the Nigerian insurance market and how they balance conflict of interest which their role engenders. The paper aims to assess how these affect the control of opportunism of customers in the Nigerian insurance market.

The study involved the use of semi‐structured interviews of insurance broking executives and documentary analyses of how incentives aid the control of opportunism in the insurance market.

Findings suggest that the Nigerian insurance market operates on highly tariff incentive system which might be hampering insurance brokers' role in bridging information asymmetries to control opportunism in the market. Conflicts of interest are also real in the insurance market.

Findings are relevant for practitioners and regulators in addressing the restrictive remuneration system which calls for liberalisation to encourage the control of opportunism in the insurance market.

The study underscores how financial incentives might be utilised to balance conflict of interest which insurance intermediation engenders.

Traditionally, individual states have shared responsibility for regulating the US insurance industry. The Dodd–Frank Act changes this by tasking the Federal Reserve with regulating the systemic risks that particularly large insurance organizations might pose and assigning the regulation of swap-based substitutes for insurance and reinsurance products to the SEC and CFTC. This paper argues that prudential regulation of large insurance firms and weaknesses in federal swaps regulation could reduce the effectiveness of state-based systems in protecting policyholders and taxpayers from nonperformance in the insurance industry. Swap-based substitutes for traditional insurance and reinsurance contracts offer protection sellers a way to transfer responsibility for guarding against nonperformance into potentially less-effective hands. The CFTC and SEC lack the focus, expertise, experience, and resources to adequately manage the ways that swap transactions can affect US taxpayers’ equity position in global safety nets, while regulators at the Fed refuse to recognize that conscientiously monitoring accounting capital at financial holding companies will not adequately protect taxpayers and policyholders until and unless it is accompanied by severe penalties for managers that willfully hide their firm’s exposure to destructive tail risks.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) creates long-term shareholder value through managing risks from economic, environmental, and social developments. Among institutional owners, pension funds have a long-term investment horizon and can influence a firm's strategy. They promote CSR activities in the long run. Mutual funds and investment banks tend to have more of a short-term investment horizon. They are not strong supporters of CSR activities. Our results support the previous time horizon hypotheses. Although pension funds prefer CSR firms in the hotel and casino industry, mutual funds and brokerage firms had no interest in CSR firms. Pension fund and mutual fund ownership is negatively related to CSR firms in the restaurant industry. Brokerage firms are indifferent to CSR firms.

This paper aims to survey available data sources and put China’s shadow banking system in perspective. Although bank loans still account for the majority of credit provided to China’s real economy, other channels of credit extension are growing rapidly. The fast expansion of shadow banking has spurred wide concerns regarding credit quality and financial stability.

This paper explores various data sources, provides an overview of shadow banking activities in China, discusses their close ties with banks and summarizes regulatory issues. Extensive descriptive data are included to provide a comprehensive picture of the nature of shadow banking activities in China. In particular, institutions and products are discussed in great details.

While China’s shadow banking system is by no means simple, it does not (yet) involve the extensive use of financial derivatives. Rather, shadow banking credit is often directly extended to the real economy. In addition, shadow banks are typically interconnected with commercial banks in various ways. The expanding scale and constantly evolving structure of the shadow banking system has posed challenges for financial regulators.

This paper attempts to quantify the scale and scope of China’s shadow banking activities and provides a consistent framework as the basis for cross-country comparison of shadow banking systems. This is one of the first scholarly research products that discusses the origin, nature and risks of China’s shadow banking system in a regulatory context.

The impact of the deregulation movement in the United States on commercial banks and other depository institutions is evaluated and their strategic responses to the intensification of non‐bank competition on the financial services industry are considered.