The Banking Crisis and the Insurance Markets

Cross‐Industry Product Diversification and Contagion in Risk and Return: The case of Bank‐Insurance and Insurance‐Bank Takeovers

“…Skeptics argue, however, that the bancassurance structure is vulnerable due to conflicts of interest/culture, allocative distortions, regulatory arbitrage, subsidization of nonbank affiliates via the bank safety net (e.g., bailouts), affiliation risk (bank runs due to nonbank affiliate problems), and the creation of financial and political super powers (Herring and Santomero, ; Flannery, ; Santomero and Eckles, ). A main concern among regulators is whether the risk inherent in these conglomerates has a greater potential to spill over to other financial firms and, ultimately, to the real economy (Parsons and Mutenga, ), thus causing a systemic failure.…”