IRANIAN JOURNAL OF INSURANCE RESEARCH (SANAAT-E-BIMEH)
Year:2014 | Volume:29 | Issue:3 (115)|Papers Count:12

Economic reform aimed at improving the social welfare is one of the important goals of policy makers. The efficiency of insurance companies and the impact of price liberalization during 1388 have been analyzed in this study. For this purpose, in the first stage, the efficiency of insurance companies is calculated during 1382-90 using a hybrid approach of Gram-Schmidt algorithm and data envelopment analysis. In this stage, firstly, the correlation between the model variables is reduced by Gram-Schmidt algorithm and then the efficiency of the companies is measured by MSBM. In the second stage, the impact of price liberalization on the efficiency of insurance companies is investigated by GEE. The results indicated that the price liberalization has negatively affected the efficiency of insurance companies. Finally, some suggestions have been proposed to enhance the current status.

The relationship between the firm's ownership structure and its performance is considered as the most important issue in the field of finance. An increase in the performance indices causes shareholders' satisfaction and is considered as an opportunity to raise risk acceptance capacities of the companies. The effect of the ownership types of major shareholders (bank and non-bank ownership) on the performance of insurance companies in Iran has been investigated in the current research. To measure the performance, two criteria including, return on assets (ROA) and return on equity (ROE) were applied as the dependent variables. The required data have been acquired from the financial statements of 16 firms in insurance industry during 2004 till 2011. The results revealed that there is a positive significant linear relationship between major bank ownership and the performance of insurance companies in consistent with the monitoring hypothesis. Moreover, the insurance companies can benefit from their technical capabilities in the realms of the technology and finance. They take the advantage of a powerful financial institution's support conditions. On the other hand, there is no significant relationship between the major non-bank ownership and the performance indices.

The existence of stable inflation is considered as one of the main reasons behind the inadequate demands toward the life insurance in Iran that will decrease purchasing power of the life insurance death benefit. In order to investigate the issue, 204 questionnaires have been distributed among two groups of life insurance buyers and those who have not bought life insurance yet. According to the statistical analyses, the hypothesis assuming inflation as the most important obstacle behind the demand for life insurance has been approved. To eliminate the negative effects of inflation on the life insurance demand, the solution of providing an optimum currency basket for calculating death benefit has been taken into consideration. In order to derive an optimum currency basket, the method of Genetic Algorithm has been used and the optimum weight for the currency basket has been calculated as the Iran Rial (0.008), Norway Krone (0.066), U.S Dollar (0.522) and EURO (0.404).

Supervision over the insurance companies has always been a major concern of the governments. In insurance sectors, the payment of the service cost before the service fulfillment (loss payment) is rendered and the ability of liability fulfillment by the insurer are the most important challenges for the insurers. Therefore, the governments are obliged to establish rigid regulations. One of these regulations is the existence of solvency in the insurance companies for the risk exposure, disaster and catastrophic events compensation. There is an obvious conflict between insurance regulation and accounting in Iran. By establishing accounting Standard No. 28 in 1388, the gap between this standard and insurance realities have been arised. In insurance industry, a precise loss evaluation and establishing a sufficient reserve for the risk in an unknown place and time is considered, but in accounting standards, in order to make such a reserve, due to the lack of identification of the beneficiary or accuracy about the amount or time of the claim, complementary technical reserve (natural disasters) is not regarded as a debt. The result of the effects of accounting standard 28, not computing the complementary technical reserve and the increase of debtors on the solvency margin of insurance companies are evaluated in the current study.

Insurance salesmen have an important role in the profitability and competitiveness of the insurance industry at micro and macro levels. A coherent approach to the selection and development of the practitioners in the field and the determination of competencies required of them is important. This study is meant to identify the competencies required in insurance by using the Delphi technique and white resource based theory and pragmaticm approach. Then, the competences has been recognized and ranked, using the network analysis. To measure the validity of the methodology, the LISREL software and confirmatory factor analysis were used. The results indicated that the competencies of problem solving, communication, insurance knowledge, occupational ethics, the ability to take advantage of information technology, creativity, risk management, emotional intelligence, familiarity with various financial services and familiarity with internet marketing techniques are the most important competencies required for the insurance sellers, respectively. The results of this study will guide the insurance industry managers in human resource planning area. In addition, the above mentioned results can help managers in the fields of staffing, recruitment, training and performance evaluation of sales network.

Knowledge is considered as one of the important components in gaining sustainable competitive advantage, efficiency preservation and the effectiveness of organizations. Management of this valuable asset needs a special attention to optimizing the required organizational capabilities, making solidarity and coordination between them. Therefore, organizational capabilities have an impressive role in facilitating knowledge management's implementations and producing competitive environment in the organization. For this reason, in this article, the role and effect of technological, structural and cultural capabilities in the prosperity of the organization's competitive performance have been investigated considering the mediator role of knowledge management. The statistical population of the research included 200 experts and managers in a private insurance company. To gather the data, the census method and questionnaire have been used. In order to test the hypothesises and the research model, Partial Least Square (PLS) method has been used. The research findings indicated that the cultural capability has a positive and meaningful correlation with the organization's competitive performance. Also, the research findings confirmed the mediator role of the knowledge management. Based on the findings, some suggestions were presented to the managers and researchers of this organization.

The current study identifies the effective factors on the brand loyalty in the insurance companies affiliated to the banks. The sample society includes the insurance companies affiliated to the banks in Tehran and the responders are customers and consumers of these companies around this city. The results indicated that the interest in the brand has the greatest impact on the customer loyalty. The emotional commitment to the brand and the strategic management approaches in relation to the customer loyalty are effective directly and indirectly, respectively. Amongst the components of strategic relationship marketing, the emotional approaches have the greatest impact on the customers' loyalty. Also, other variables such as uniqueness, confidence and self-image have had the greatest impact on the customer loyalty. The variable of "cost" did not have any direct or indirect significant effect on the customer loyalty.

In the third party insurance, because of existing the Bouns-Malus system and using the end of the year discount, the insured does not report small claims to the insurance company; therefore, extra zeros in the frequency of the insured claims will be created. On the other hand, the analysis of the frequency of claims and the risk factor on this response is of great importance for the insurance company. For this purpose, some numerical models using power series distribution like Poisson Regression Model, Negative Binomial Regression Model and zero-inflated power series distribution like zero-inflated Poisson model and inflated negative binomial zero have been applied for the third party insurance data analysis with extra zeros. It is possible to generalize these models for the third party insurance longitudinal data. A likelihood-based approach is used to obtain maximum likelihood estimates of the parameters of the model. In this method, the EM-algorithm is used to obtain the maximum likelihood estimates of the parameters for the zero- inflated models. Finally, to illustrate the utility of the proposed models, some real third party longitudinal data were analyzed.

Insurable interest is considered as the basic concept in the insurance contracts which distinguishes it from wagering and gambling. Although, insurable interest as an essential contractual factor is provided in section 4 of the Iranian Insurance Act and indemnity insurance, it has been never attended independently as "Insurable Interest" among the Iranian researches. Therefore, it is necessary to investigate and determine the notion of insurable interest in the Iranian law due to its importance in insurance contracts. The ultimate goal of this paper is to express a clarified concept of the insurable interest in the indemnity assurance via a comparative study of England and France laws. The Section 4 of the Iranian Assurance Act includes property ownership right as an insurable interest, but this generalization requires more accurate study in our legal system.

Protecting the labors during the period of unemployment (as unemployment compensation) has important economic and social aspects which make it as the most important concerns of the governments and inter-Governmental organizations especially the international labor organization (ILO). The history of unemployment insurances goes back to the time of negative effects of unemployment in the developed countries. Based on the comparative study of the issue in both countries, Iran and Germany, the advantages and disadvantages will appear. Germany, as an indudtrial and pioneer country, has a good precedent in regard of social insurance, considering the different issues, its experience is useful and applicable for iran law in this area. Iranian labor law, known as an immature field, could take good paces relating to the unemployment period protection via using international standards and experiences of other countries.