Regulation Of The Canadian Life Insurance Market

From the back cover: In this penetrating analysis, Professor Mathewson probes four pertinent questions relating to markets for life insurance. He explains the observed variability in the price of alternative life insurance policies by developing a model of consumer choice in life insurance and tests the implications of this model for price levels and price variability. He tests for the presence of natural monopoly elements in the industry, explaining the diversity in the size of life insurance firms and the potential economic advantage of large firms over small. He develops a theory of the role of agents to determine whether there is excessive sales effort in the marketing of insurance. Finally, he contends that there is scope for an expanded government policy on life insurance aside from solvency regulation, and advocates a publicly subsidized information policy to aid consumers in their decisions.

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When Confederation Life Insurance Co. was seized by regulators on August 11, 1994, it ranked as the fourth largest insurance company in Canada, and was among the top 30 in North America. With $19 billion (Cdn.) in assets, the company's collapse wiped out 4,400 jobs, threw into disarray owners of 250,000 policies and contracts in Canada, plus another 800,000 outside the country. It also severely damaged confidence in Canada's substantial insurance industry. In a no-holds-barred account of the debacle, financial journalist Rod McQueen documents how it all happened, and shows how Confederation Life's failure was due to the combined failure of the company and the larger public sector. Directors did not hold management sufficiently accountable, officers let things get out of hand, regulators were tardy, then threatened with too small a stick, auditors missed the big picture, politicians showed neither courage nor conviction, and, rather than help, industry representatives dithered. Any one individual among those six constituencies could have affected the course of the corporation's history sufficiently to prevent its collapse. In 1994 McQueen wrote a detailed three-part article in the "Financial Post about the Confederation Life scandal. Now, having extensively researched the history of the company, and having conducted over a hundred interviews, he has written a "whodunit" tale of Canada's biggest business story of the decade.

This book makes a substantial contribution to the general level of management education in insurance by providing a comprehensive review of the main issues facing the management of insurance enterprises. Nineteen authors with considerable practical as well as academic experience have collaborated to give an international perspective in areas such as strategy, corporate planning, organisation and staffing, costing, underwriting and premium rating, marketing, reserving and investment, profit analysis, and regulation.