Global diversification of financial institutions, including the insurance sector, has proven beneficial to many economies by providing them with increasing capital flow, higher competition, and introduction of newer technologies and distribution channels. This paper aims to critically evaluate...

Since 1994 the highly regulated German insurance market have been deregulated. Insurers have been allowed to calculate their premiums and to offer contracts without regulation. Especially in the motor vehicle insurance several innovations were introduced: age of car, garage, kilometers per year...

We study how risk management through hedging impacts firms and competition among firms in the life insurance industry - an industry with over 7 Trillion in assets and over 1,000 private and public firms. We show that firms that are likely to face costly external finance increase hedging after...