Ist Blockchain das neue Allheilmittel für die Versicherungswirtschaft? Das VersicherungsJournal geht dieser Frage in einer dreiteiligen Artikelserie nach. In Teil drei zeigt Professor Dr. Alexander Braun, wie Start-ups die Technologie für sich nutzen.
Due to their relatively high yields and low return correlations with traditional asset classes, insurance-linked securities (ILS) are often described as an attractive investment opportunity. Yet, the investor base for ILS is largely dominated by a few specialized investment managers. The aim of this paper is to analyze advantages and disadvantages, the current market development and the decision-making processes that drive the demand for this aspiring asset class. To reach this aim, we first review the existing knowledge on ILS instruments and markets, then present results of a new international survey among ILS Investors and finally, based on the results of the first and second step, derive implications for the future development of ILS.
The key findings of our study can be summarized as follows: To date, transaction costs along with lacking experience / knowledge and regulatory uncertainty are the most significant impediments to ILS market expansion. Skin in the game is necessary to attract investors; we show that a 5 to 10% sponsor investment leads to large increases in the willingness to invest. We observe that investors do not consider ratings as necessary and that having no rating is better than having a bad rating. Overall, the ILS market is likely to grow substantially over the next years; the survey participants expect its volume to double by 2019. In this context, we discuss the role of new instruments such as protected cell companies and new types of risks such as cyber risk, high frequency risks or run-off risks.
The exposure of corporations to political risks has increased in the past years, mainly driven by globalization and the outsourcing of production to emerging markets. One way to address these new challenges is Political Risk Insurance (PRI), which, however, has attracted little scholarly interest to date. We address this research gap by identifying the major determinants of the demand for PRI. To this end, we developed an extensive questionnaire and distributed it among insurance managers in Central Europe. Our empirical analysis builds on Exploratory Factor Analysis and Logistic Regression. We are able to show that a company’s propensity to purchase PRI increases with its perceived exposure to political risks, its perceived experience and expertise with the instrument, as well as the perceived adequacy of the contract’s price. Other factors, such as the size of the firm, the perceived importance of its risk management department or the perceived availability of information on PRI, do not seem to play a significant role.
This work is devoted to the question of how managers can successfully probe latent needs and uncover future needs of customers, labeled as proactive customer orientation. Based on an observation of specialized proactive customer-oriented departments, expert interviews, workshops with managers, and a meta-analysis of existing research, two dimensions of proactive customer orientation are defined, proactive customer-oriented climate and proactive customer-oriented processes. New scales are developed for the two constructs, and the reliability, validity, and generalizability of the second-order measurement models are supported by an empirical study of 218 business-to-business firms and 202 business-to-consumers firms
Employee performance plays a vital role for the success of a service brand (Berry 2000; Vallaster and de Chernatony 2005). Other than with product brands, where consumers’ perceptions of a brand derive predominantly from a product’s tangible features, customers’ perceptions of a service brand depend highly on the behavior of front-line staff. It is they, through their demeanor, communications, and actions, who build an image of the service brand in the minds of customers. Of the variables that are likely to elicit brand-building behaviors on the part of front-line workers, effective leadership has been proposed as one of the key driving forces. Specifically, transformational leadership (TFL) as a leadership style oriented toward follower-development has been suggested to be of high value in the context of services brand building efforts (Vallaster and de Chernatony 2005). However, to date no specific attempt has been undertaken to conceptually and empirically substantiate this assumption. The purpose of this research is to explore how transformational supervisors may enhance brand-building behaviors on the part of front-line employees. We attempt to (1) conceptualize a new construct – employee brand building behavior; (2) adopt the concept of TFL to the specific domain of branding; and (3) explain the working mechanisms of the brand-specific transformational leadership process.
This study examines whether the adoption of International Accounting Standards and International Financial Reporting Standards by German firms in 2005 improved earnings' predictive power with regard to forecasting future operating cash flow. We consider earnings' predictive power as one dimension of accounting quality. We use a data sample of German DAX and MDAX firms ranging from 2001 to 2011. The sample is split into two distinct subsamples (time period before and after 2005, the year of the adoption of International Accounting Standards) to test whether earnings' predictive power has changed. We employ a disaggregated cash flow forecasting model in which earnings are split into the components cash flow and accruals. Accruals are further decomposed into individual accrual measures. We predict that the adoption of International Accounting Standards affected accruals differently and that the model's overall predictive power improves after the adoption. Our results do not support the IASB's claim that International Accounting Standards are superior to German-GAAP and have a significantly positive impact on earnings' predictive power.
Sigmund Freud sagt: «Der Mensch ist ein unermüdlicher
Lustsucher, und jeder Verzicht
auf eine einmal genossene Lust wird ihm sehr
schwer.» Der Schweizer Handel kann davon
ein Lied singen. Die Lust, im alltäglichen Einkauf
grosse Summen zu sparen, hat viele Konsumenten
immer öfter in die grenznahen Einkaufsgebiete gedrängt.
Vom starken Franken getrieben, hat ein ökonomischer
Erdrutsch die Schweizer Einkaufszentren und
Geschäfte teilweise leergefegt, während die Warteschlangen
an den Kassen in Frankreich, Deutschland,
und Österreich immer länger wurden.
