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This study examines the market reaction when announcements of large dividend increases are made by more versus less rate‐regulated firms in the same industry. The insurance industry was chosen because property/liability insurers are rate‐regulated more than life/health insurers. The abnormal returns are positive and significant for all insurers but smaller than those found in previous cross‐sectional studies. Abnormal returns for the less rate‐regulated life/health insurers during the dividend increase announcement period are significantly greater than those of the more rate‐regulated property/liability insurers.

The business model of monoline insurers is to guarantee payments of debt issues in case of defaults by the issuer. Although sparse attention is given to monolines in literature, they play an important role in enabling municipalities and firms in refinancing. This study aims to conduct a systematic review of 181 articles from 1990 to 2020 from 23,130 records and a case study on the key monoline insurers. Key failure, success factors and demand for future monoline insurance are identified. Finally, the study explores monolines’ potential during COVID-19 and develops a framework for monoline governance and regulation.

The study follows Briner and Denyer and Moher et al. to implement the systematic review. The methodology involves ascertaining the motivation behind the review, and formulating research questions; aggregating relevant prior literature from scientific databases, conducting quality assessment and synthesising the data; and conducting extensive analysis for framework development. Case study methodology foundation phase focuses on understanding the research philosophy. The second phase involves documenting the procedures involved. The final phase involves collecting the relevant quantitative and qualitative material. In addition, collecting empirical data from numerous sources allows triangulation.

The review results of 181 articles from 1990 to 2020 show that peak article counts occur in 2010 and 2013 (nine academic studies) and in 2008 and 2010 (six industry studies). Over- and under-explored domains happen to be bond pricing (86 academic studies) and bond markets (36 industry studies) and corporate bonds (19 academic studies), respectively. The study highlights failure factors such as adverse selection, premiums mispricings, inadequate capital and regulation, untimely downgrades and governance issues; and identifies success factors such as conservative underwriting, early financing, competitor business acquisitions and obtaining put-back claims. Potential during COVID-19 is discussed and a monoline governance framework is developed.

Search and selection criteria distortions may lead to sample selection bias in systematic reviews. Issue is addressed by using different permutations of the search key words to refine the search criteria. Reference list of collected final sample of articles are perused to identify additional articles. It is difficult to obtain verifiable empirical data on the bond/monoline insurers or their insured products, especially for the structured finance sector. Most of the information available on data stream and firm’s quarterly financial reports for publicly traded monoline/bond insurers and credit rating reports are included to overcome this issue.

Demand for bond/monoline insurance still persists even in the USA. Although borrowing costs are low, obtaining bank loans would be challenging for municipalities and corporates with increased risks. Especially, given worldwide government stimulus on wages, most municipalities would possess reduced budgets for public finance. Monoline insurance can play a key role in financing such projects. Thus, it is important to understand their unique traditional and transformed business model and applicability during and post-COVID-19. Given the near extinction of bond/monoline insurers during the 2008 global financial crisis (GFC), an adequate framework for bond/monoline insurers as developed in this study is key for future business continuity.

There is significant interest, especially, from the industry on monolines as identified in our systematic review. Monoline insurance has major effects on taxpayers, government policies and bond investors. They aid in financing public finance projects that have significant societal impact. This study contributes by filling existing gaps in the literature, especially, from a behavioural, ethical and social perspective of the monolines, regulators, other stakeholders and new entrants to the industry during COVID-19. This study links prior finance theories to the impact of bond/monoline insurer’s during the 2008 GFC and their stakeholders involved that has societal implications.

This study can be differentiated from prior research on monoline insurers as follows: The study identifies, gaps, similarities, trends between prior academic and industry literature and develop a bond/monoline governance framework; identifies key failure and success factors during the 2008 GFC crisis to develop the governance framework and identify monolines’ potential during COVID-19; as opposed to most prior literature that only focus on one (Drake and Neal, 2011 analyse MBIA) or two key bond/monoline insurers, this study focuses on five key bond/monoline insurers in detail and all other key insurers as well in the empirical analysis section.

This paper aims to analyze systemic risk in and the effect of capital regulation on the European insurance sector. In particular, the evolution of an exposure measure (SRISK) and a contribution measure (Delta CoVaR) are analyzed from 1985 to 2016.

With the help of multivariate regressions, the main drivers of systemic risk are identified.

The paper finds an increasing degree of interconnectedness between banks and insurance that correlates with systemic risk exposure. Interconnectedness peaks during periods of crisis but has a long-term influence also during normal times. Moreover, the paper finds that the insurance sector was greatly affected by spillovers from the process of capital regulation in banking. While European insurance companies initially at the start of the Basel process of capital regulation were well capitalized according to the SRISK measure, they started to become capital deficient after the implementation of the model-based approach in banking with increasing speed thereafter.

These findings are highly relevant for the ongoing global process of capital regulation in the insurance sector and potential reforms of Solvency II. Systemic risk is a leading threat to the stability of the global financial system and keeping it under control is a main challenge for policymakers and supervisors.

This paper provides novel tools for supervisors to monitor risk exposures in the insurance sector while taking into account systemic feedback from the financial system and the banking sector in particular. These tools also allow an evidence-based policy evaluation of regulatory measures such as Solvency II.

This paper seeks to provide an overview on potential impacts German primary life insurers are exposed to in relation to upcoming Solvency II regulation and potential strategic choices, especially in the light of halting low‐interest rates. Given a large degree of complexity, the paper aims at giving some guidance to decision makers considering a discontinuation of underwriting.

The paper builds upon current observations made in the German primary life insurance industry, especially, recent strategic decisions of two market participants to discontinue their life insurance carriers. On the background of low‐interest rates but yet guaranteed interest participations and additional capital requirements arising from Solvency II, the paper illustrates the strategic options life insurers have in the German market, given the specific market environment.

Regulatory capital requirements of Solvency II will sanction guarantee products in a way that for some insurers life products will become unattractive. As there is evidence in the market that some participants have started to consider the run‐off option for selected carriers, the paper finds that this option may represent an appropriate consequence not only for foreign insurers ceasing their business in Germany but also for domestic insurance groups. Given the specific rules‐in‐use in the German primary life insurance market, the paper discusses the controlled run‐off approach as a strategic option for selected life insurers, enabling a harvesting strategy through maximizing cash flows from existing liabilities while avoiding further investments.

Discussions in this paper help to bring into focus the strong challenges by both the upcoming regulatory Solvency II and current market conditions. The brief case study included in this paper may illustrate the implications as well as some crucial success factors of discontinued life business.

The purpose of this article is to identify what truly propels property and casualty insurance industry leaders to reach their peak performance.

Selection: from an initial list of 706 insurers worldwide, the authors screened for publicly held companies that derived at least 60 percent of their annual revenues from sales of property and casualty products and for which at least five years of detailed financial data were available. The final sample included only companies from advanced economies of North America, Europe and Australia, for a total of 86 insurers. Variables: the regression analysis investigated possible correlations between total shareholder returns and 17 measures of business mix and financial performance, including total revenue growth, total net premium growth and profitability growth. Time period: The authors ran tests on data covering the decade from 1994 through the end of 2004.

Consistent, sustainable revenue growth is the surest path to superior shareholder returns.

What sets the top performers in the insurance industry apart is an ability to master two of today's thorniest growth challenges: (1) high‐performance insurers cultivate organic growth by identifying their most valuable customers and investing to increase sales to them; by recruiting new clients through referrals and by lifting retention rates; (2) insurers that rely on mergers and acquisitions to boost revenues make regular, modest‐sized deals to add real value, and they integrate their new acquisitions quickly and seamlessly.

Property and casualty insurers that achieve top‐quartile revenue growth and produce exceptional returns for shareholders weave organic growth and acquisitions into a virtuous cycle of revenue expansion, pursuing deals that reinforce their ability to deliver customer value.

This paper aims to examine the capital market effects and predominance of unregulated embedded value (EV) financial reporting in the life insurance industry in foreign domestic markets, and US markets for foreign firms that cross-list in the USA.

Recent empirical archival data are analyzed and evaluated to determine the incremental and relative value relevance of an unregulated valuation metric that is disclosed by life insurers.

The findings support the proposition that EV is valuable supplemental information in foreign domestic markets, and in US markets for foreign life insurers that cross-list in the USA. Given that International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) and the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) are engaged in projects to improve accounting standard for insurance companies, and have faced criticism with the existing drafts on this issue, the two institutions ought to consider the valuation relevance of EV disclosures. Moreover, this analysis strongly suggests that financial analysts in the USA should consider EV in valuing life insurers’ stocks.

The findings discussed in this paper are of special interest to financial reporting policy makers, financial analysts, firm compensation committees and managers, and academics.

This paper contributes to the extant literature by providing recent evidence that suggests that EV, an unregulated fair value market-driven metric, is more value-relevant than traditional earnings metrics such as earnings and book value. It is the only study that we are cognizant of that critically examines the recent empirical literature on this evolving issue.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the insurable risks that impacted the operations on complex construction projects in developing countries using Ghana as a case study.

In this study, structured questionnaires were used to collect relevant information from the top management of construction and insurance firms in Ghana, comprising 50 industry professionals. The study adopted the χ² and independent samples’ t test to interpret the responses from participants.

The study revealed the major risks that severely impacted the operations on complex construction projects, including strikes and labour disputes, long waiting time for approval of test samples, damages to property during construction, delay in payment to contractor for work done, poor construction method, pressure to deliver project on an accelerated schedule, labour shortage, permits delayed or take longer than expected, inaccurate materials estimating, change in weather pattern, low productivity of subcontractors and inadequate contractor experience.

The study is expected to contribute to increase in the awareness of the insurable risks and policies that project participants are exposed to, which will serve as a decision-making tool for contract formation.

This study assists in managing construction and insurance firms to note the major risk in managing a complex construction project. In addition to knowing the major risks identified, the study investigates the insurable risk by managing both construction and insurance firms.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the total number of mortgage default occurrence possibilities and monetary damage amounts to the sampled properties due to the excessive flooding caused by natural disasters. Mortgage default loss assessments due to natural catastrophic events are of great interest to lenders, insurance firms, forensic engineering professionals, inspecting agencies and the federal and state government planning officials and risk-mitigating teams.

In this study, a stochastic methodology is used to address the risk of mortgage default losses and the homeowners’ investment returns, given: damage severity levels of hurricane floods and the mortgage types and arrangements on selected properties. Nine different houses, with various mortgage arrangements, located in different flood damage zones were investigated three years after Hurricane Katrina. To quantify the flood damage risk values which are compared with exceeding damage probabilities, the Poisson’s distribution is used through performing random variable analysis walks for each property during each house’s mortgage life cycle.

Henceforth, through introduction and constructing the “Zonal Damage Matrix” for the investigated houses, the total number of mortgage default occurrence possibilities and monetary damage amounts to the properties are calculated for each exceeding flood. Thereafter, the homeowners’ net equity values and the investment returns are estimated for risk identification and evaluation purposes.

For each of the sampled houses, the probability of mortgage defaults and the homeowners’ net equity values are estimated using Poisson’s distribution based on 60,000 randomly generated numbers to construct ten different hazard-related default scenarios for each property over the 30-year mortgage life cycle. The investment returns are therefore estimated for risk identification and evaluation purposes.

The purpose of this study is to evaluate whether the implementation of sustainable business models contributes to improving a firm’s performance during a global crisis, such as the one caused by COVID-19. Based on the triple bottom line theory, the paper explores the relation between the creation of value through solid corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategies, United Nations (UN) Global Compact’s (GC) business model proposals and Global Reporting Initiative’s (GRI) reporting scheme.

The present paper studies companies within the European Union, focusing specifically on the long-term impact of using the world’s most widely used standards for sustainability reporting – the GRI’s standards and/or the UNGC management models, as well as on the firm’s performance based on the financial results during COVID-19 crisis. To achieve this goal, the study analyses the share price of firms publicly listed in the FTSEMIB (benchmark index of Italy’s largest trading platform) out of those companies that are implementing the UN and GRI’s tools.

Findings show how a commitment to sustainable business models and long-term CSR strategies can contribute to firm’s ability to overcome periods of economic crisis. Furthermore, implementing GRI standards and UNGC guidelines within the business model seems to have a positive impact in overcoming a hard context such as COVID-19. In addition, it contributes to a better understanding of stakeholders’ needs, consumer profiling and value creation.

This study evaluates firms’ business models, considering the effects of decisions made in the context of COVID-19. The role of UNGC and GRI is evaluated in terms of their contribution to firms’ financial performance and corporate reputation during a context of hardship. Consequently, this study contributes to academia and practice, adding value in areas related to strategic planning and business model design.

The purpose of this study is to explore the impact of sustainability (environmental, social and governance or ESG) practices on the financial performance (FP) of the Nordic financial industry.

The study covers a sample selection of observations for a total of 152 firm-years for 39 financial companies within the Nordic region (Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Norway) for the business years including 2015–2019. Data regarding ESG and FP indicators were extracted from the Thomson Reuters Eikon database in July 2020. This is a quantitative study using regression and a generalized method of moments.

Using static and dynamic estimators, the authors found both positive and negative impacts of sustainability practice on FP. The authors identified a negative relationship between ESG practices and FP (return on invested capital, return on equity and earnings per share). The authors identified a positive relationship between governance and return on assets.

A key contribution to the accounting literature is the finding that there is a risk for financial firms in adopting sustainability practices, as they follow a logic that contradicts the purely economic rationale. On the other hand, the positive relationship between governance and FP helps not only companies but also regulators and researchers to understand the positive impact of a good governance structure.