Haskayne School of Business Research & Publications

Permanent URI for this collection

https://prism.ucalgary.ca/handle/1880/100033

Browse

Browsing Haskayne School of Business Research & Publications by Department "Finance Risk Management & Insurance"

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
    The Distribution of Property/Liability Insurance in Canada: Costs and Market Structure
    (Western Risk and Insurance Association, 2006) Kleffner, Anne; Kelly, Mary
    Studies in the U.S. show that insurers that operate as exclusive writers have lower expense ratios than agency writers. In addition, exclusive and commodity writers dominate personal lines of insurance and agency writers dominate commercial lines. In contrast, Canadian agency writers dominate both personal and commercial lines. Furthermore, in Canada, a firm's distribution method does not affect its relative expenses. We conjecture that the higher fixed costs faced by exclusive and commodity writers in Canada counterbalance the lower variable costs faced by these firms. The lack of dominance in personal lines by Canadian exclusive writers is a rational response to the smaller market size in Canada and the higher level of government intervention.
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
    An Examination of Property & Casualty Insurer Solvency in Canada
    (Western Risk & Insurance Association (WRIA), 2009) Kleffner, Anne; Lee, Ryan B
    This paper provides both a qualitative and empirical analysis of insolvency experience in the Canadian property and casualty insurance industry. First, we provide a qualitative analysis of the differences between Canada and the U.S. that may help to explain the lower incidence of insolvency experience in Canada. These include differences in regulation and monitoring, such as the presence of a federal regulator and higher capital requirements, and differences in the environment, such as lower legal liability risk and less exposure to catastrophic risk. Second, we use logistic regression methodology and variables commonly used in U.S. studies of insurer insolvency prediction to test whether such models are able to predict insolvency for Canadian insurers. We include variables that attempt to capture some of the important differences between the Canadian and U.S. markets. The results suggest that only the profitability measure, return on assets, is found to be a statistically significant predictor of insolvency, and that result holds only one year prior to insolvency. This relationship is consistent with many previous studies on U.S. property and casualty insurer insolvency.
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
    The impact of adjuster moral hazard on driving records
    (Society of Actuaries, 2009) Kleffner, Anne; Kelly, Mary; Isotuba, Sapna
    In a first-party recovery scheme for automobile property damage, the first-party insurer compensates not-at-fault vehicular damage. In this scheme, adjusters may not have the incentive to assign liability when the driver is, in fact, at fault for the accident. This is due to adjusters not having to coordinate with a third-party adjuster, and, for insureds that carry collision coverage, the assignment of fault does not appreciably affect the compensation paid out. This in turn reduces the effectiveness of the experience-rating component of the insurance premium. Empirical evidence that supports the presence of incorrect fault assignment is provided. A stochastic model of experience rating analyzing the impact of incorrect fault assignment on driving record classes confirms that low-risk insureds pay more for insurance than if fault was correctly assigned.
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
    The Relationship Between Automobile Liability Costs and Government Social Spending
    (HEC Montreal, 2011) Kleffner, Anne; Born, Patricia; Chan, David
    Liability insurance is one of the primary mechanisms for compensating individuals who are injured in auto accidents. An injured individual’s propensity to seek compensation through the legal system depends on his or her expected payoff and access to other sources of compensation. A justification for social insurance programs that provide compensation to injured parties is the potential for such compensation to reduce the need for victims to seek compensation through the legal system. If such programs serve as substitutes for the legal system as sources of compensation, then we expect that as spending on these programs decreases, liability costs will increase, and vice-versa. Using State-level data for the U.S., and provincial-level data for Canada, we evaluate the relationship between government health/welfare spending and automobile liability insurance costs. Our results suggest a small but significant substitute relationship in both countries. Information that substantiates a connection between these sources will be useful in public assistance decision-making.