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Estimating the Willingness
to Pay for Community-Based Health Insurance
Schemes in Nigeria: A Random Valuation Framework
--Hyacinth Eme Ichoku,
--William M Fonta,
-- John E Ataguba
Community-based health insurance schemes attempt to bridge the gap between increasing health needs
and scarce resources in poor communities as well as providing protection for the most vulnerable groups
through cross-subsidization. However, these schemes are often initiated without strong empirical information
that can help to benchmark cost-sharing potentials of households in the community. This study assesses
the Willingness To Pay (WTP) of rural Nigerians for one aspect of the nation's new National Social Health
Insurance Scheme initiated in 2004. As a case study, the Nsukka District of Enugu State, Southeastern Nigeria is
used, where a rural community social health insurance scheme is being proposed by the local authorities.
The results indicate that rural households in the area have WTP of about 181 Naira or $1.5 monthly as
healthcare premium for this scheme. This amount was found to be positively and significantly correlated with
household educational attainment, household wealth, household size and the level of trust households have in
the management of the proposed scheme.
© 2010 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
Bancassurance: Leveraging on the Synergy Between Banking and Insurance Industry
--Ajai Kumar Singhal ,
--Rohit Singh
By opening the economy for foreign players to enter and compete in the market, numerous challenges
and opportunities beckoned the domestic players in India. The banking and insurance sectors also got affected
by this and started to reenergize their work and revamped the whole system to face the situation. They
also initiated business into some new areas and as a result, both these sectors came together to leverage
the opportunities available to them so as to reap the prospects of individual specializations. Thus, the concept
of bancassurance emerged. It is the detailed agreement and arrangement between the banks and
insurance company in which the insurance products are distributed properly by effectively utilizing the banks
distribution channels. It is regarded as a one-stop shop where a complete range of banking and insurance products
are made available. It originated in France and is a new concept in India and Asia, but it has its success story
in Europe, the USA and Canada. This research paper is an attempt to assess the vital aspects of
bancassurance and evaluate how this synergy is leveraging benefits for banking and insurance.
© 2010 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
Risk Dependence and Safest Aggregate Claims
--Li-Hua Lai
This paper investigates the property of multivariance dependence among individual risks and studies
its effect on the related stop-loss premiums. Among the aggregate claims, Hu-Wu (1999) found a type of
negative dependency among individuals which gives rise to the safest aggregate claims, in the sense that, it leads
to the least stop-loss premium. This study first presents some counter examples that can produce less
risk aggregate claims than those documented in Hu and Wu's study. Next, the supplemental conditions
ensure that the safest aggregate claims are presented. The study also uses some illustrations to see how our
method could give the safest aggregate claims.
© 2010 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
Financial Engineering and Innovation as Risk Management Tools: The Case of Indian
Companies During Global Financial Crisis
--Vivek Shah,
--Padma Srinivasan
In layman's terms, financial engineering is an engineering discipline which deals with the creation of new
and improved financial products through innovative design or repackaging of existing financial
instruments. Financially, engineered products like American Depository Receipt (ADR) and Global Depository Receipt
(GDR) have provided Indian companies access to international financial markets to raise funds. However,
financial engineering is considered as being responsible for triggering the global financial crisis by increasing
leverage and price risks. The regulatory framework is not the only solution to deal with the negative side of
financial engineering, the informed market that responds sensibly to financial innovations (which is the current
need) is also responsible. This paper looks into how fund raising by innovative financial instruments impacts
the share price of the company using the cases of the Indian corporate houses.
© 2010 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
Using Analytic Network Process Method
to Evaluate Curriculum in Department
of Risk Management and Insurance
--Chiang Ku Fan,
--Michael S W Du,
--Jeffery Y K Sheu
This paper aims to identify which curriculum among local universities produces the most desired
graduates working in the life insurance industry. The research is limited to Taiwan. The paper also deploys a
curriculum performance evaluation through combining the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) and the Grey
Relational Analysis (GRA) methods. The AHP is used in obtaining the relative weights of criteria and then the
GRA approach is employed to rank how universities perform using this curriculum. Curriculum has been
grouped and ranked in finding the most appropriate curriculum in universities for life insurance companies.
The results suggest that Tamkang University (TKU) provides the most appropriate curriculum and its students
are the most employable by life insurance companies in Taiwan. The proposed algorithm which is objective
and systematic in selection procedures can assist human resources managers in recruiting highly qualified
graduates for their companies.
© 2010 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
Product Portfolio Trends in Indian General Insurance Industry
--Manjit Singh,
--Rohit Kumar
Globalization has made a profound impact on the Indian insurance industry and has resulted in an
overall increase in the awareness of the insuring public about the wide range and choice of insurance products
and their prices offered by the competing insurers in the market. Several new and innovative products have
been designed, developed and introduced into the market, particularly by private players. All these favorable
conditions for the insurance sector, need an evaluation of trends in the product portfolio, to examine the growth
and development in the insurance sector in the post-liberalization period. The study aims at examining
the emerging trends of each product portfolio in the public sector and the private sector general
insurance companies in the post-liberalization era to identify the gaps and to make suggestions to general
insurance companies to increase spread penetration by improving their product portfolio performance. The study
concludes that the Indian general insurance industry lacks balanced product portfolio performance, as the
companies emphasize only few portfolios like motor, fire, health, etc., where the need of the hour is to have a
balanced portfolio performance to sustain general insurance penetration. So, the general insurance companies
should market their entire portfolio to achieve balanced portfolio performance and increased insurance penetration.
©2010 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
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