Friday, 29 March 2019: 3:40 PM
Nicholas Apergis, Ph.D. , Banking and Financial Management, University of Piraeus, Piraeus, Greece
Thomas Poufinas, Ph.D. , Economics, Democritus University of Thrace, Komotini, Greece
Over the years, insurance has been in the spotlight for several reasons, primarily for the purpose it serves, as it offers income, life and property protection to the insured and their kin, as well as income accumulation that can be used at retirement to help preserve the desired lifestyle or living standard. This last role of insurance is important, as it helps the different countries reduce the burden of their social security pensions. In addition, insurance has gained attention, as insurance companies and in particular pension schemes/ funds are among the biggest (if not the biggest) investors in the world. Finally, similar to banking and other financial institutions, uniform regulation has been attempted, at least in the European Union, so as to establish a common playing field. Consequently, insurance growth is of interest to a series of stakeholders; the shareholders, the insured, the intermediaries, the employees, the regulators and the society in total. Investigating the drivers of insurance industry growth is thus of great interest and this is what we attempt to do in our research. More specifically, we try to find the link between insurance growth and economic growth. The former is measured (mainly) by premium, market share, density, penetration, retention and investments. The latter is measured by the country macroeconomic variables that indicate economic growth, such as GDP, GDP per capita, market capitalization and (un)employment. We use data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and Eikon - Datastream to perform panel data econometric analysis so as to find evidence that supports the effect of economic growth on insurance growth.