IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ecb/fsrart/201500022.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Euro area insurers and the low interest rate environment

Author

Listed:
  • Berdin, Elia
  • Kok, Christoffer
  • Mikkonen, Katri
  • Pancaro, Cosimo
  • Simon, Josep Maria Vendrell

Abstract

The current environment of protracted low interest rates poses major challenges to euro area insurance companies. This special feature discusses how a prolonged low-yield period might affect the profitability and the solvency of euro area insurers. In the article, it is argued that if interest rates were to stay low for a long time, this could have material implications for the profitability and the solvency of many insurers. However, it is also shown that the impact of low interest rates is likely to differ markedly across insurance companies depending on their business model and balance sheet structure. In particular, the impact is expected to be highest for small and medium-sized life insurers with large government bond portfolios and high guarantees to policyholders that reside in countries where these guarantees are rigid and where contracts embed a long time to maturity. JEL Classification: G00

Suggested Citation

  • Berdin, Elia & Kok, Christoffer & Mikkonen, Katri & Pancaro, Cosimo & Simon, Josep Maria Vendrell, 2015. "Euro area insurers and the low interest rate environment," Financial Stability Review, European Central Bank, vol. 2.
    • Handle: RePEc:ecb:fsrart:2015:0002:2
    Note: 508948
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.ecb.europa.eu//pub/pdf/fsr/art/ecb.fsrart201511_02.en.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Bonizzi, Bruno, 2017. "Institutional investors’ allocation to emerging markets: A panel approach to asset demand," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 47-64.
    2. Berdin, Elia & Pancaro, Cosimo & Kok Sørensen, Christoffer, 2016. "A stochastic forward-looking model to assess the profitability and solvency of European insurers," ICIR Working Paper Series 21/16, Goethe University Frankfurt, International Center for Insurance Regulation (ICIR).
    3. 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).
    4. Patty Duijm & Ilke Van Beveren, 2022. "Product diversification as a performance boosting strategy? Drivers and impact of diversification strategies in the property‐liability insurance industry," Risk Management and Insurance Review, American Risk and Insurance Association, vol. 25(3), pages 303-328, September.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Euro area insurers; low interest rate environment;

    JEL classification:

    • G00 - Financial Economics - - General - - - General

    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:ecb:fsrart:2015:0002:2. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Official Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/emieude.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.