Are some insurers relevant for the stability of the financial system? And if yes, what firm fundamentals and aspects of insurers' business models cause them to destabilize an entire financial sector? We find that several insurers did indeed contribute significantly to the instability of the U.S. financial sector during the recent financial crisis. We empirically confirm that insurers that were most exposed to systemic risk were larger, relied more heavily on non-policyholder liabilities and had higher ratios of investment income to net revenues on average. Contrary to current conjectures of insurance regulators, we find that the contribution of insurers to systemic risk is only driven by insurer size.
a b s t r a c tUsing search volume data on crisis-related queries from Google Trends, we estimate three different measures of market-level and individual crisis sentiment. We find that the stock performance of international banks during the period Q1 2004 to Q4 2012 was significantly driven by investors' irrational market-wide crisis sentiment. Our empirical analysis shows that irrational market-wide crisis sentiment leads investors to devalue bank stocks irrespective of idiosyncratic or macroeconomic fundamentals. Comparing this finding with results for a sample of non-financial companies, we find evidence in support of the notion that the effect of crisis sentiment on stock returns is strongest in the absence of implicit bailout guarantees.
Are some insurers relevant for the stability of the financial system? And if yes, what firm fundamentals and aspects of insurers' business models cause them to destabilize an entire financial sector? We find that several insurers did indeed contribute significantly to the instability of the U.S. financial sector during the recent financial crisis. We empirically confirm that insurers that were most exposed to systemic risk were larger, relied more heavily on non-policyholder liabilities and had higher ratios of investment income to net revenues on average. Contrary to current conjectures of insurance regulators, we find that the contribution of insurers to systemic risk is only driven by insurer size.
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