The Quality of Insurance Intermediary Services – Empirical Evidence for Germany

Martina Eckardt and Solvig Räthke-Döppner
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Solvig Raethke-Doeppner

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: Insurance intermediaries help consumers to economize on information and transaction costs in insurance markets. However, competing insurance intermediaries provide heterogeneous services, which are difficult to assess by incompletely informed consumers. Transaction costs economics, search theory and principal agent theory provide arguments on product quality differences between the two main distribution channels in insurance markets (exclusive agents vs. independent intermediaries). The present paper uses a sample of 927 insurance intermediaries in Germany. By performing OLS estimations we test the impact of the different distribution channels, but also of other factors relating to the information processing activities on intermediaries’ service quality. Depending on the proxies used for service quality, we find mixed evidence for the “product quality” hypothesis according to which independent intermediaries provide better service quality than exclusive agents. We find that service quality depends also to a large extent on the information gathering and processing activities of the individual intermediaries.

Keywords: Insurance Distribution Channels; Service Quality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D23 D83 G22 L15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ias
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Related works:
Journal Article: The Quality of Insurance Intermediary Services—Empirical Evidence for Germany (2010)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:10703

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