External Financing in the Life Insurance Industry: Evidence From the Financial Crisis

Thomas R. Berry-Stölzle, Gregory P. Nini and Sabine Wende

Journal of Risk & Insurance, 2014, vol. 81, issue 3, 529-562

Abstract: type="main" xml:lang="en">

The financial crisis and subsequent recession generated sizable operating losses for life insurance companies, yet the consequences were far less significant than for other financial intermediaries. The ability to quickly generate new capital through external issuance and dividend reductions let life insurers maintain healthy levels of equity capital. We use this experience to examine the causes and consequences of external capital issuance by U.S. life insurance companies. We show that, in general, new capital is issued both to support the growth of new business and to replace capital depleted by operating losses. This second channel is particularly important during macroeconomic recessions. Notably, we do not find any evidence that insurers had difficulty generating new capital, unlike other financial service providers that required large amounts of public support. For life insurers, what changed following the financial crisis was the demand to raise external capital, but the supply of external capital appears to have remained constant.

Date: 2014
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (26)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/ (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:jrinsu:v:81:y:2014:i:3:p:529-562

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.wiley.com/bw/subs.asp?ref=0022-4367

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Risk & Insurance is currently edited by Joan T. Schmit

More articles in Journal of Risk & Insurance from The American Risk and Insurance Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().