infonet-economy

Insurance companies are important financial institutions exposed to natural and man-made disasters. We conduct a comprehensive examination of existing asset pricing models in the US insurance universe (1988-2013) and propose an insurance-specific asset pricing model. We find that extant asset pricing models fail to explain the cross-section of insurance stock returns. Instead, we provide evidence that the factors of the insurance-specific model (book-to-market ratio, short-term reversal, illiquidity, and cashflow volatility) are priced in the cross-section of property/liability insurance stocks. Our model takes into account both insurance-specific anomalies primarily related to the insurance business cycle and externalities imposed by catastrophe risk.