Target Capital Structure of Insurance Companies

Abstract

This article is devoted to the analysis of the existence of target capital structure of insurance companies and empirical testing of wide known capital structure theories for Russian insurance companies. Trade-off and “pecking order” theories were considered and the model that reflects the impact on the capital structure indicators various characteristics of firms was built. Traditional for insurance markets coefficients — net premium/capital ratio and liabilities/active ratio — were considered as capital structure indicators. It was shown that tradeoff theory is more adequate for Russian insurance market. The existence of target capital structure was discovered. Such indicators as firm size, the share of premiums transferred to reinsurance, return on assets, returned on capital have significant impact on the capital structure. The opportunity to grow, which was estimated as growth in premiums, and the breadth of the range didn’t has significant impact.