IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/gla/glaewp/2022_07.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Default Risk and the Cross-Section of UK Insurance Firms’ Returns

Author

Listed:
  • Mario Cerrato
  • Paolo Coccorese
  • Xuan Zhang

Abstract

In this paper, we use a novel data-set of UK public and non-public insurance firms between 1985-2014 to investigate the empirical relationship between insurance firm’s returns and default risk as well as between industry default risk and reinsurance activity. We investigate whether some important firm’s characteristics (particularly, size and reinsurance) can help us to understand that relationship. We employ a novel cross-sectional portfolio approach and, after splitting returns into underwriting and investment returns, find evidence that default risk is negatively related to firms’ returns, while it is closely related to size and reinsurance activities especially for small size firms. We also report empirical evidence showing that returns in the insurance industry are exposed to a common risk factor.

Suggested Citation

  • Mario Cerrato & Paolo Coccorese & Xuan Zhang, 2022. "Default Risk and the Cross-Section of UK Insurance Firms’ Returns," Working Papers 2022_07, Business School - Economics, University of Glasgow.
    • Handle: RePEc:gla:glaewp:2022_07
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.gla.ac.uk/media/Media_901113_smxx.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Acharya, Viral & Almeida, Heitor & Ippolito, Filippo & Orive, Ander Perez, 2020. "Bank lines of credit as contingent liquidity: Covenant violations and their implications," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 44(C).
    2. Thomas W. Bates & Kathleen M. Kahle & René M. Stulz, 2009. "Why Do U.S. Firms Hold So Much More Cash than They Used To?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 64(5), pages 1985-2021, October.
    3. Lei Li & Philip E. Strahan & Song Zhang, 2020. "Banks as Lenders of First Resort: Evidence from the COVID-19 Crisis," NBER Working Papers 27256, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Dingel, Jonathan I. & Neiman, Brent, 2020. "How many jobs can be done at home?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 189(C).
    5. Heitor Almeida & Murillo Campello, 2007. "Financial Constraints, Asset Tangibility, and Corporate Investment," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 20(5), pages 1429-1460, 2007 12.
    6. Heitor Almeida & Murillo Campello & Michael S. Weisbach, 2004. "The Cash Flow Sensitivity of Cash," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 59(4), pages 1777-1804, August.
    7. David J. Denis & Valeriy Sibilkov, 2010. "Financial Constraints, Investment, and the Value of Cash Holdings," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 23(1), pages 247-269, January.
    8. Lei Li & Philip E Strahan & Song Zhang, 2020. "Banks as Lenders of First Resort: Evidence from the COVID-19 Crisis," The Review of Corporate Finance Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 9(3), pages 472-500.
    9. Joan Farre-Mensa & Alexander Ljungqvist, 2016. "Do Measures of Financial Constraints Measure Financial Constraints?," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 29(2), pages 271-308.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Mario Cerrato & Hormoz Ramian & Shengfeng Mei, 2022. "European firms, Panic Borrowing and Credit Lines Drawdowns: What did we learn from the COVID-19 shock? (updated version February 2023)," Working Papers 2022_12, Business School - Economics, University of Glasgow.
    2. Gopalakrishnan, Balagopal & Jacob, Joshy & Mohapatra, Sanket, 2022. "COVID-19 pandemic and debt financing by firms: Unravelling the channels," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 114(C).
    3. Chung, Hae Jin & Jhang, Hogyu & Ryu, Doojin, 2023. "Impacts of COVID-19 pandemic on corporate cash holdings: Evidence from Korea," Emerging Markets Review, Elsevier, vol. 56(C).
    4. Gopalakrishnan, Balagopal & Jacob, Joshy & Mohapatra, Sanket, 2021. "Government responses, business continuity, and management sentiment: Impact on debt financing during COVID-19," IIMA Working Papers WP 2021-04-03, Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad, Research and Publication Department.
    5. Robin Döttling & Tomislav Ladika & Enrico Perotti, 2016. "The (Self-)Funding of Intangibles," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 16-093/IV, Tinbergen Institute.
    6. Schürg, Carolin V. & Bannier, Christina Evelies, 2015. "Corporate investment, debt and liquidity choices in the light of financial constraints and hedging needs," VfS Annual Conference 2015 (Muenster): Economic Development - Theory and Policy 114561, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    7. Williamson, Rohan & Yang, Jie, 2021. "Tapping into financial synergies: Alleviating financial constraints through acquisitions," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 68(C).
    8. Eskandari, Ruhollah & Zamanian, Morteza, 2022. "Cost of carry, financial constraints, and dynamics of corporate cash holdings," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 74(C).
    9. Moritzen, Mark Raun & Schandlbauer, Alexander, 2020. "The impact of competition and time-to-finance on corporate cash holdings," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 65(C).
    10. Atsushi Chino & Joon Ho Kim, 2022. "Does dividend policy affect sales growth in product markets? Evidence from the 2003 dividend tax cut," Financial Management, Financial Management Association International, vol. 51(2), pages 539-571, June.
    11. Jianqiao Huang & Yunsen Chen & Xin Dai & Xiaoran Ni, 2022. "Stock market liberalisation and corporate cash holdings: evidence from China," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 62(S1), pages 1925-1955, April.
    12. Abdul Rashid & Maryam Ashfaq, 2017. "Financial Constraints And Corporate Cash Holdings: An Empirical Analysis Using Firm Level Data," Annals of Financial Economics (AFE), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 12(02), pages 1-26, June.
    13. Chen, Hsuan-Chi & Chou, Robin K. & Lu, Chien-Lin, 2018. "Saving for a rainy day: Evidence from the 2000 dot-com crash and the 2008 credit crisis," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 680-699.
    14. Favara, Giovanni & Gao, Janet & Giannetti, Mariassunta, 2021. "Uncertainty, access to debt, and firm precautionary behavior," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 141(2), pages 436-453.
    15. von Beschwitz, Bastian, 2018. "Cash windfalls and acquisitions," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 128(2), pages 287-319.
    16. Sai Ding & Minjoo Kim & Xiao Zhang, 2021. "New Insight on Investment-Cash Flow Sensitivity," Working Papers 2021_16, Business School - Economics, University of Glasgow.
    17. Choonsik Lee & Heungju Park, 2016. "Financial constraints, board governance standards, and corporate cash holdings," Review of Financial Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 28(1), pages 21-34, January.
    18. Viral V Acharya & Sascha Steffen, 2020. "The Risk of Being a Fallen Angel and the Corporate Dash for Cash in the Midst of COVID," The Review of Corporate Finance Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 9(3), pages 430-471.
    19. Chang, Yanhao & Benson, Karen & Faff, Robert, 2017. "Are excess cash holdings more valuable to firms in times of crisis? Financial constraints and governance matters," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 157-173.
    20. Zhuang, Yuan & Nie, Jing & Wu, Weixing, 2022. "Peer influence and the value of cash holdings," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 265-284.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Economic growth; Risk; Insurance firms;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G20 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - General
    • G23 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Non-bank Financial Institutions; Financial Instruments; Institutional Investors
    • G28 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Government Policy and Regulation

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:gla:glaewp:2022_07. 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: Business School Research Team (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dpglauk.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.