Measuring the Efficiency and Performance of Quoted Insurance Companies in Nigeria: Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) Approach

This study measures the efficiency and performance of quoted insurance companies in Nigeria. Specifically, it determines the extent to which quoted insurance companies in Nigeria are efficient (technical, allocative and scale) in terms of their resource utilization and the performance (total factor productivity growth rate) of quoted insurance companies in Nigeria. In pursuance of the above, the study employs the input oriented data envelopment analysis (DEA) model with four input and output variables. The input variables are management expenses, net premium, shareholders fund and total asset while the output variables are investment income, net claims, profit after tax and market share. These variables were used for the analysis with the aid of input oriented DEAP version 2.1 with variable return to scale assumption using multi stage DEA approach. The result revealed that quoted insurance companies in Nigeria are relatively inefficient. Only seven companies are technically efficient as the result indicates a mean variable returns to scale technical efficiency score of 59%. On the other hand, we observed that twenty-six companies were scale efficient with a mean scale efficiency score of 87% showing that quoted insurance companies are relatively efficient in their choice of scale or size of operations and that Standard Trust Assurance Company (STACO) has the highest peer count. We also discovered the presence of high slacks for management expenses, net profit, shareholders fund and total asset and this shows the degree of inefficient allocation of resources in the Nigerian quoted insurance companies. On the other hand, the output fall (slack) mean of investment income, net claims, profit after tax and market share indicate what the companies would have achieved if the input variables were properly allocated. Finally, we observed that there is no total factor productivity increase in Nigerian quoted insurance companies as only 7 (seven) firms out of thirty-four recorded varying degrees of productivity progress. We therefore recommend possible merger and acquisition of the inefficient companies with the efficient ones in the insurance sector in order to strengthen the insurance companies in Nigeria. We also recommend that total asset and shareholders fund be depleted or upgraded because they recorded the highest input slack score while deliberate attempt should be made to increase firms total market share and profit after tax for efficiency purposes since they recorded the highest output slacks.