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The purpose of this paper is to examine how insurance brokers control opportunism at the postcontractual stage of insurance contract in the Nigerian insurance market. Such opportunism, widely reported of insurance commercial customers, threatens the survival of the entire insurance institution while brokers' role is grossly ignored.

The paper involved the use of semi‐structured interviews of insurance broking executives and documentary analyses of how insurance brokers gather and pass on information between clients and insurers to control opportunism in the insurance market.

Findings suggest that the involvement of the insurance brokers from the claim notification stage, claim auditing to actual settlement and dispute mediation are instances of control over customers' opportunistic tendencies. Also, it is found that fear of reputation damage and brokers' professional way of handling clients' over‐exaggeration and suspicious claiming might considerably control insurance opportunism.

Involving insurance brokers in the claim settlement stage is capable of reducing insurers' claim auditing costs while guaranteeing hassle‐free claiming experience for customers and boosting the image of the insurance industry. Hence, findings are relevant for insurance companies and regulators desirous of controlling opportunism in the insurance market.

The paper extends the marketing role of brokers to the claim settlement stage by highlighting their potentials to control clients' opportunistic behaviours which threaten the insurance market.

Risk management consists of a process that involves the assessment and evaluation of risks. Identifying risks that can be reduced and risks that can be transferred (through insurance) is part of that process. The environment for insurance affects the ability of the high technology‐based entrepreneur to engage in this process. For example, the availability of product liability cover can affect the ability to develop new products. In a combined study of Scottish and West Midlands high technology‐based small firms (HTSFs), follow‐up interviews, cases and research in the insurance industry, we found that this environment is less than perfect. There are issues in the insurance industry that can lead to problems for high technology‐based entrepreneurs. These issues are associated with the availability and search costs associated with specialized insurance. Failure rates of high technology‐based entrepreneurs, although below those of other small firms, are still high. The high cost and limited availability of specialized insurance, which is sought by the high technology entrepreneur, contributes to the difficulty of the environment and adds to the costs and/or risks faced by such entrepreneurs.

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.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of disclosure of sales compensations on insurance brokers’ intention to make inappropriate product recommendations.

This research examines the insurance brokers’ intention to make inappropriate product recommendations through an application of the theory of planned behavior. Surveys are used as the research instrument, and the hypotheses are tested with a between-subjects experimental design. One case of mandatory disclosure and one case of non-mandatory disclosure are compared in the research.

The results indicate that the disclosure of sales compensations is significantly associated with the subjective norms from the official authority and perceived behavioral control (PBC). The results of this study also indicate that, when the disclosure is mandatory, the PBC has a stronger effect on the insurance brokers’ intention to make biased product recommendations than dose the attitude and subjective norms. When the disclosure is non-mandatory, however, the subjective norms have a stronger effect on the insurance brokers’ intention.

The impacts of compensation disclosures on the financial professionals’ product recommendations have been less examined. This study could make a contribution to the literature by providing some empirical observations from the views of Taiwan’s life insurance brokers.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the impacts of the size and timing of sales compensations, the management stringency of the insurer and the insurance broker's own moral views on product recommendations made by the brokers.

The data used in this research were gathered from life insurance broker companies in Taiwan.

The results showed that the sales compensations, perceived leniency of the insurer's underwriting and claim policy would affect the product recommendations made by the brokers.

Insurance brokers are one of the most important marketing channels in the insurance industry. However, using the insurance brokers to sell insurance may result in some ethical problems. For example, some insurance brokers may sell insurance to high-risk customers because the high-risk customers may prefer to buy more insurance and that means more sales compensations can be earned. The findings of this research may have some implications for insurance management and insurance regulation.

This study contributes to the understanding of insurance brokers' responses to adverse selection problems (high-risk customers may prefer to buy more insurance) and product recommendation decisions. The issue has been less mentioned in the financial regulation literature.

In view of the complexity of supply chain management (SCM) in the insurance industry, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper was the first to use symmetrical and asymmetrical methos to examine how the insurer’s service quality and SCM can be configurated to explain the relationships between the insurance companies and brokers as the intermediaries. This study positions insurance brokers as the insurance companies’ customers and supply chain partners, aims to examine the relationships between service quality, SCM and relationship quality.

This paper undertook two studies and used two methods to examine how the insurer’s service quality and SCM can be configurated to explain the relationships between the insurance companies and brokers as the intermediaries. Both symmetrical and asymmetrical analyses were performed including regression and fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA).

The results from symmetrical analyses and fsQCA from two countries show substantial differences in how service quality and SCM affect relationship quality. In particular, fsQCA show that all service quality dimensions are important antecedent conditions of relationship quality for Portuguese brokers. Interestingly for Irish brokers, the combination of assurance, responsiveness and the insurer’ empathy conjunctively accounted for their satisfaction, whereas none of these quality factors are related to their commitment and trust. All SCM factors are important to explain the brokers’ relationship quality with their chosen insurers for both countries.

This study contributes to three areas of research: service quality, SCM and relationship marketing. Firstly, this study used an asymmetrical approach to providing insights into the effect of service quality dimensions by showcasing how these dimensions were configurated to explain the outcome of interest, rather than examining their symmetrical path coefficients. Secondly, this study identified the key factors of SCM in the insurance industry and how these factors can be configurated through Boolean algebra to explain relationship quality between supply chain partners. Finally, this study has implications for relationship marketing research.

As the study was conducted with the insurance brokers in Portugal and Ireland, the findings have implications for the insurance companies for the two countries. As different service quality factors and SCM exert different effects on relationship quality, the insurance companies should look into these factors to modify their current practice to improve relationship quality with their brokers.

Theoretically, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to approach from intermediaries to address effectiveness of SCM. Methodologically, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to use fsQCA – a case-based approach to understand SCM and relationship quality between stakeholders.

In this brief paper the authors consider the duties owed by professional indemnity insurance brokers to their insured clients. Given the prevalence of claims for financial mis‐selling this is an important issue of concern to all authorised advisers. Any failure to obtain or maintain cover leading to uninsured loss will naturally attract the potential attention of the broker’s own insurers. The authors summarise what the law expects of brokers in standard situations.

In this introductory overview an indication of the range of financial services that is available will be presented, along with some examples of marketing practices in relation to these services and some observations about some of the suppliers of financial services. This coverage will then be followed by a brief review of research in the field of financial services marketing, a note on careers in this field, and a summary of courses in the field.

This paper aims to measure the extent of effects of insurance fraud on the financial performance of insurance companies in Ghana. It also examines the causes and stringent measures that can be used to fight against insurance fraud.

Primary and secondary data obtained from 39 insurers in Ghana are used in this paper. A multiple regression model is used to determine the relationship between financial performance and insurance fraud variables.

The results from the model indicate that statistically insurance fraud has a significant negative effect on the annual return on assets (financial performance) of insurers in Ghana. Also, weak internal controls, poor remuneration of employees, falsified documents, deliberate acts of policyholders to profit from the insurance contract and inadequate training for independent brokers are found to be the major causes of insurance fraud in Ghana. To deter insurance fraud, effective internal fraud policy, rigorous assessment of insurance policies and claims, adequate training for independent brokers on insurance fraud and modern information technology tools are paramount in fighting this menace in Ghana.

These findings are to have substantial impact on the techniques insurance companies will develop to fight insurance fraud and the policies that will be developed by governments and national insurance regulatory bodies to fight this menace.

The main value of this paper is the determination of the key variables that constitute insurance fraud and their impacts on the annual financial performance of insurance companies in Ghana.

This paper aims to investigate whether enhanced requirements result in the depositories exiting the business. Furthermore, this paper attempts to analyse prospective changes to the operating structures caused by the Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive (AIFMD). Most importantly, this paper discusses the processes to evaluate and manage counterparty risk relating to prime brokers. AIFMD makes fundamental changes to the depository liability and managing counterparty risk by making a depository bank liable for any losses to investor assets, even those held within third-party custodians appointed by the depository. Depositories will also need to calculate the probability of default of their sub-custodians and use complex credit models to calculate any capital requirements under the fourth Capital Requirements Directive (CRD IV).

This paper is based on an insightful secondary analysis of the AIFMD with practical implications drawn for depository banks. The analysis of this topical research has been broken down into the following sections: assessing and managing counterparty risk of prime brokers; insurance against defaults of prime brokers; and regulatory-driven challenges and changes to depository banks.

The post-Lehman banking industry has realised that counterparty risk cannot be ignored. This has triggered heated debates among regulators and practitioners whereby any depository bank should clearly separate the assets of its clients from the depository assets and its own assets. This paper argues that the custodian services will witness consolidation with the big players remaining and small custodians forced to leave the business in light of the enhanced liabilities under the AIFMD. In addition to this, this paper has stressed that assessing counterparty risk should be supported by an insightful analysis of the culture of a prime broker; its legal, structural and regulatory safeguards; and quality of assets. Moreover, managing risks associated with prime brokers entails significant costs to depositories. Thus, depository banks are advised to factor these costs into their pricing models.

Given the magnitude of recent regulatory initiatives and complex challenges faced by depositories, an important question arises whether depository banks would exit the business in light of the regulatory-induced liabilities. This paper addresses the aforementioned question and provides practical implications into managing emerging risks by depository banks. At this point, the majority of depositories are in a process of developing in-house solutions for managing risks related to prime brokers, and hence would benefit from practical insights into these processes that are provided in this paper.