IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/jrinsu/v87y2020i2p407-436.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

An Empirical Analysis of Market Reactions to the First Solvency and Financial Condition Reports in the European Insurance Industry

Author

Listed:
  • Nadine Gatzert
  • Dinah Heidinger

Abstract

In 2017, insurers in the European Union disclosed their Solvency and Financial Condition Reports (SFCRs) according to the third pillar of Solvency II for the first time. The aim of this article is to empirically analyze market reactions to the first SFCRs for all publicly listed insurers in the European Union that published an English report based on an event study. We thereby investigate which key figures and textual attributes matter most to investors, using regression analyses and text mining approaches. We also discuss potential areas for improvement concerning SFCR disclosure, such as a central public disclosure platform and further standardization of disclosure requirements, which could further enhance the goals of transparency and market discipline in relation to Solvency II's Pillar 3. Our results show that SFCR key figures matter more than textual features. Specifically, we find a significantly positive market impact of the solvency ratio calculated without transitionals or adjustments and a significantly negative one for the solvency capital requirement (SCR).

Suggested Citation

  • Nadine Gatzert & Dinah Heidinger, 2020. "An Empirical Analysis of Market Reactions to the First Solvency and Financial Condition Reports in the European Insurance Industry," Journal of Risk & Insurance, The American Risk and Insurance Association, vol. 87(2), pages 407-436, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:jrinsu:v:87:y:2020:i:2:p:407-436
    DOI: 10.1111/jori.12287
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/jori.12287
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/jori.12287?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Paul C. Tetlock & Maytal Saar‐Tsechansky & Sofus Macskassy, 2008. "More Than Words: Quantifying Language to Measure Firms' Fundamentals," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 63(3), pages 1437-1467, June.
    2. Ursel Baumann & Erlend Nier, 2004. "Disclosure, volatility, and transparency: and empirical investigation into the value of bank disclosure," Economic Policy Review, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, issue Sep, pages 31-45.
    3. Linsley, Philip M. & Shrives, Philip J., 2006. "Risk reporting: A study of risk disclosures in the annual reports of UK companies," The British Accounting Review, Elsevier, vol. 38(4), pages 387-404.
    4. Tim Loughran & Bill Mcdonald, 2016. "Textual Analysis in Accounting and Finance: A Survey," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 54(4), pages 1187-1230, September.
    5. Martin Eling & Hato Schmeiser & Joan T. Schmit, 2007. "The Solvency II Process: Overview and Critical Analysis," Risk Management and Insurance Review, American Risk and Insurance Association, vol. 10(1), pages 69-85, March.
    6. Dalia Kolmatsui & Renata Legenzova & Mantas Seilius, 2016. "An Assessment of Risk and Risk Management Information Disclosure of Companies Listed in Nasdaq OMX Baltic and Euronext Brussels," Central European Business Review, Prague University of Economics and Business, vol. 2016(3), pages 52-68.
    7. Sunil Poshakwale & John K. Courtis, 2005. "Disclosure level and cost of equity capital: evidence from the banking industry," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 26(7), pages 431-444.
    8. Tsai, Feng-Tse & Lu, Hsin-Min & Hung, Mao-Wei, 2016. "The impact of news articles and corporate disclosure on credit risk valuation," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 68(C), pages 100-116.
    9. Yekini, Liafisu Sina & Wisniewski, Tomasz Piotr & Millo, Yuval, 2016. "Market reaction to the positiveness of annual report narratives," The British Accounting Review, Elsevier, vol. 48(4), pages 415-430.
    10. Tim Loughran & Bill McDonald, 2015. "The Use of Word Lists in Textual Analysis," Journal of Behavioral Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 16(1), pages 1-11, January.
    11. Cummins, J. David & Lewis, Christopher M. & Wei, Ran, 2006. "The market value impact of operational loss events for US banks and insurers," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 30(10), pages 2605-2634, October.
    12. Gillet, Roland & Hübner, Georges & Plunus, Séverine, 2010. "Operational risk and reputation in the financial industry," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 34(1), pages 224-235, January.
    13. Tim Loughran & Bill Mcdonald, 2014. "Measuring Readability in Financial Disclosures," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 69(4), pages 1643-1671, August.
    14. Asthana, Sharad & Balsam, Steven, 2001. "The effect of EDGAR on the market reaction to 10-K filings," Journal of Accounting and Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 20(4-5), pages 349-372.
    15. Froot, Kenneth A. & Stein, Jeremy C., 1998. "Risk management, capital budgeting, and capital structure policy for financial institutions: an integrated approach," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 47(1), pages 55-82, January.
    16. Leuz, C & Verrecchia, RE, 2000. "The economic consequences of increased disclosure," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 38, pages 91-124.
    17. Mirko S. Heinle & Kevin C. Smith, 2017. "A theory of risk disclosure," Review of Accounting Studies, Springer, vol. 22(4), pages 1459-1491, December.
    18. Paul C. Tetlock, 2007. "Giving Content to Investor Sentiment: The Role of Media in the Stock Market," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 62(3), pages 1139-1168, June.
    19. Biell, Lis & Muller, Aline, 2013. "Sudden crash or long torture: The timing of market reactions to operational loss events," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(7), pages 2628-2638.
    20. Fiordelisi, Franco & Soana, Maria-Gaia & Schwizer, Paola, 2013. "The determinants of reputational risk in the banking sector," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(5), pages 1359-1371.
    21. Johnson, William C. & Xie, Wenjuan & Yi, Sangho, 2014. "Corporate fraud and the value of reputations in the product market," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 25(C), pages 16-39.
    22. Kearney, Colm & Liu, Sha, 2014. "Textual sentiment in finance: A survey of methods and models," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 33(C), pages 171-185.
    23. Ertugrul, Mine & Lei, Jin & Qiu, Jiaping & Wan, Chi, 2017. "Annual Report Readability, Tone Ambiguity, and the Cost of Borrowing," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 52(2), pages 811-836, April.
    24. Fama, Eugene F, 1970. "Efficient Capital Markets: A Review of Theory and Empirical Work," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 25(2), pages 383-417, May.
    25. Carlos Alves & Victor Mendes & Paulo Pereira da Silva, 2015. "Do stress tests matter? A study on the impact of the disclosure of stress test results on European financial stocks and CDS markets," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 47(12), pages 1213-1229, March.
    26. Jukka Vauhkonen, 2012. "The Impact of Pillar 3 Disclosure Requirements on Bank Safety," Journal of Financial Services Research, Springer;Western Finance Association, vol. 41(1), pages 37-49, April.
    27. Zimmer, Anja & Schade, Christian & Gründl, Helmut, 2009. "Is default risk acceptable when purchasing insurance? Experimental evidence for different probability representations, reasons for default, and framings," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 30(1), pages 11-23, February.
    28. Samuel B. Bonsall & Brian P. Miller, 2017. "The impact of narrative disclosure readability on bond ratings and the cost of debt," Review of Accounting Studies, Springer, vol. 22(2), pages 608-643, June.
    29. Jordan, John S. & Peek, Joe & Rosengren, Eric S., 2000. "The Market Reaction to the Disclosure of Supervisory Actions: Implications for Bank Transparency," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 9(3), pages 298-319, July.
    30. Angela K. Davis & Jeremy M. Piger & Lisa M. Sedor, 2012. "Beyond the Numbers: Measuring the Information Content of Earnings Press Release Language," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 29(3), pages 845-868, September.
    31. Chia-Chun Hsieh & Kai Wai Hui & Yao Zhang, 2016. "Analyst Report Readability and Stock Returns," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 43(1-2), pages 98-130, January.
    32. Philip M. Linsley & Michael J. Lawrence, 2007. "Risk reporting by the largest UK companies: readability and lack of obfuscation," Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 20(4), pages 620-627, July.
    33. Mohammad I. Jizi & Robert Dixon, 2017. "Are Risk Management Disclosures Informative or Tautological? Evidence from the U.S. Banking Sector," Accounting Perspectives, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 16(1), pages 7-30, March.
    34. Tim Loughran & Bill Mcdonald, 2011. "When Is a Liability Not a Liability? Textual Analysis, Dictionaries, and 10‐Ks," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 66(1), pages 35-65, February.
    35. Li, Feng, 2008. "Annual report readability, current earnings, and earnings persistence," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 45(2-3), pages 221-247, August.
    36. Martin Eling & Joan T Schmit, 2012. "Is There Market Discipline in the European Insurance Industry? An Analysis of the German Insurance Market," The Geneva Risk and Insurance Review, Palgrave Macmillan;International Association for the Study of Insurance Economics (The Geneva Association), vol. 37(2), pages 180-207, September.
    37. Jegadeesh, Narasimhan & Wu, Di, 2013. "Word power: A new approach for content analysis," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 110(3), pages 712-729.
    38. Enrique Bonsón & Virginia Cortijo & Tomas Escobar & Francisco Flores & Sergio Monreal, 2010. "Solvency II and XBRL: new rules and technologies in insurance supervision," Journal of Financial Regulation and Compliance, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 18(2), pages 144-157, May.
    39. Yang Bao & Anindya Datta, 2014. "Simultaneously Discovering and Quantifying Risk Types from Textual Risk Disclosures," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 60(6), pages 1371-1391, June.
    40. Donald P. Morgan & Stavros Peristiani & Vanessa Savino, 2014. "The Information Value of the Stress Test," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 46(7), pages 1479-1500, October.
    41. Franco Fiordelisi & Maria-Gaia Soana & Paola Schwizer, 2014. "Reputational losses and operational risk in banking," The European Journal of Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 20(2), pages 105-124, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Grochola, Nicolaus & Schlütter, Sebastian, 2023. "Discretionary decisions in capital requirements under Solvency II," ICIR Working Paper Series 50/23, Goethe University Frankfurt, International Center for Insurance Regulation (ICIR).
    2. Paulusch, Joachim & Schlütter, Sebastian, 2022. "Sensitivity-implied tail-correlation matrices," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 134(C).
    3. Simon Fritzsch & Philipp Scharner & Gregor Weiß, 2021. "Estimating the relation between digitalization and the market value of insurers," Journal of Risk & Insurance, The American Risk and Insurance Association, vol. 88(3), pages 529-567, September.
    4. Enrique Bonson & David Perea & Graca Azevedo, 2021. "Tone and content analysis in the president’s letters to shareholders: Spanish evidence," Upravlenets, Ural State University of Economics, vol. 12(1), pages 78-90, March.
    5. Grochola, Nicolaus & Browne, Mark Joseph & Gründl, Helmut & Schlütter, Sebastian, 2021. "Exploring the market risk profiles of U.S. and European life insurers," ICIR Working Paper Series 39/21, Goethe University Frankfurt, International Center for Insurance Regulation (ICIR).
    6. Sanan Mukhtarov & Martijn Schoute & Jacco L. Wielhouwer, 2022. "The information content of the Solvency II ratio relative to earnings," Journal of Risk & Insurance, The American Risk and Insurance Association, vol. 89(1), pages 237-266, March.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ingrid E. Fisher & Margaret R. Garnsey & Mark E. Hughes, 2016. "Natural Language Processing in Accounting, Auditing and Finance: A Synthesis of the Literature with a Roadmap for Future Research," Intelligent Systems in Accounting, Finance and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 23(3), pages 157-214, July.
    2. Barakat, Ahmed & Ashby, Simon & Fenn, Paul & Bryce, Cormac, 2019. "Operational risk and reputation in financial institutions: Does media tone make a difference?," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 98(C), pages 1-24.
    3. Senave, Elseline & Jans, Mieke J. & Srivastava, Rajendra P., 2023. "The application of text mining in accounting," International Journal of Accounting Information Systems, Elsevier, vol. 50(C).
    4. Christina Bannier & Thomas Pauls & Andreas Walter, 2019. "Content analysis of business communication: introducing a German dictionary," Journal of Business Economics, Springer, vol. 89(1), pages 79-123, February.
    5. Renato Camodeca & Alex Almici & Umberto Sagliaschi, 2018. "Sustainability Disclosure in Integrated Reporting: Does It Matter to Investors? A Cheap Talk Approach," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(12), pages 1-34, November.
    6. Tim Loughran & Bill Mcdonald, 2016. "Textual Analysis in Accounting and Finance: A Survey," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 54(4), pages 1187-1230, September.
    7. Anand, Abhinav & Basu, Sankarshan & Pathak, Jalaj & Thampy, Ashok, 2021. "The impact of sentiment on emerging stock markets," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 75(C), pages 161-177.
    8. Bassyouny, Hesham & Abdelfattah, Tarek & Tao, Lei, 2022. "Narrative disclosure tone: A review and areas for future research," Journal of International Accounting, Auditing and Taxation, Elsevier, vol. 49(C).
    9. Yan Luo & Linying Zhou, 2020. "Textual tone in corporate financial disclosures: a survey of the literature," International Journal of Disclosure and Governance, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 17(2), pages 101-110, September.
    10. Ahmed, Yousry & Elshandidy, Tamer, 2016. "The effect of bidder conservatism on M&A decisions: Text-based evidence from US 10-K filings," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 176-190.
    11. Dutta, Shantanu & Fuksa, Michel & Macaulay, Ken, 2019. "Determinants of MD&A sentiment in Canada," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 60(C), pages 130-148.
    12. Kumar, Rahul & Deb, Soumya Guha & Mukherjee, Shubhadeep, 2020. "Do words reveal the latent truth? Identifying communication patterns of corporate losers," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, Elsevier, vol. 26(C).
    13. Kothari, Pratik & Chance, Don M. & Ferris, Stephen P., 2021. "Bragging rights: Does corporate boasting imply value creation?," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 67(C).
    14. Andres Algaba & David Ardia & Keven Bluteau & Samuel Borms & Kris Boudt, 2020. "Econometrics Meets Sentiment: An Overview Of Methodology And Applications," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 34(3), pages 512-547, July.
    15. Blankespoor, Elizabeth & deHaan, Ed & Marinovic, Iván, 2020. "Disclosure processing costs, investors’ information choice, and equity market outcomes: A review," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(2).
    16. Richard Frankel & Jared Jennings & Joshua Lee, 2022. "Disclosure Sentiment: Machine Learning vs. Dictionary Methods," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 68(7), pages 5514-5532, July.
    17. Stefan Feuerriegel & Nicolas Prollochs, 2018. "Investor Reaction to Financial Disclosures Across Topics: An Application of Latent Dirichlet Allocation," Papers 1805.03308, arXiv.org.
    18. Dimitris Anastasiou & Apostolos Katsafados, 2023. "Bank deposits and textual sentiment: When an European Central Bank president's speech is not just a speech," Manchester School, University of Manchester, vol. 91(1), pages 55-87, January.
    19. Simon Fritzsch & Philipp Scharner & Gregor Weiß, 2021. "Estimating the relation between digitalization and the market value of insurers," Journal of Risk & Insurance, The American Risk and Insurance Association, vol. 88(3), pages 529-567, September.
    20. Frankel, Richard & Jennings, Jared & Lee, Joshua, 2016. "Using unstructured and qualitative disclosures to explain accruals," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 62(2), pages 209-227.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:jrinsu:v:87:y:2020:i:2:p:407-436. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ariaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.