Compare bancassurance sales with an insurer's own team in Taiwan

No research has yet focused on comparing the efficiency among different channels when selling insurance products. To fill this gap in the research, this study concentrates on bancassurance services provided through the creation of subsidiaries and compares the efficiency of this model with the traditional insurance selling channels in Taiwan. The Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) approaches are employed to identify the weights of inputs and evaluate the efficiencies of the bancassurance and traditional channels separately. The findings are as follows: 1) The efficiency score of a life insurance company's own sales representatives is significantly higher than that of its bancassurance representatives; 2) The efficiency relationship between the bancassurance channel and the traditional selling channels is independent; 3) A marketing efficiency evaluation of a life insurance company, when divided into different marketing channels for evaluation, is capable of providing meaningful results for marketing decision-makers.