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Investigating risk reporting practices in the global insurance industry

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 June 2014

P. Klumpes*
Affiliation:
Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK
A. Kumar
Affiliation:
Ernst & Young, Singapore
R. Dubey
Affiliation:
KPMG, UK
*
*Correspondence to: Paul Klumpes, Nottingham Trent University, Burton Street, Nottingham NG11HH, UK. E-mail: [email protected]

Abstract

This paper investigates incentives and disincentives for risk reporting practices by global insurance companies. We examine various arguments for and against risk reporting, whether voluntary or compliance in nature. An important issue is whether reporting is dominated by shareholder, regulatory or managerial incentives. We evaluate whether current reporting practices are consistent with either political visibility, cultural effects or idiosyncratic managerial incentives. Our empirical analysis is based on (1) a content analysis of disclosures contained in annual reports of a sample of European, Asian and US global top 25 insurers between 2006 and 2012 and (2) a survey of internal business reporting practices. We re-characterise a disclosure index from prior research to examine the relation between the extent of risk disclosure and various managerial, agency and other characteristics. We predict that the extent and nature of risk disclosures depends on cultural imperatives and managerial incentives.

Type
Sessional meetings: papers and abstracts of discussions
Copyright
© Institute and Faculty of Actuaries 2014 

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