AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS OF OPERATING EFFICIENCYOF CHINA LIFE INSURERS

Since the Insurance Regulatory Commission announced ‘the notice of implementation of WTO commitments’ in Dec.11th 2004，which broaden the business scope and operation limitations of foreign life insurance companies, China has fully opened up its life insurance industry. While contributing to improving the governance structure and management level of China’s insurance industry, foreign life insurers also brought a greater increase in competitive pressures and the consequent operation risks. Therefore, how to maintain sustainable development and enhance the competitiveness of the industry becomes a major issue. This paper employs DEA approach to measure technical efficiency of 29 life insurers with panel data between 2006 and 2009 in order to provide new information about operating efficiency of China’s life insurance industry. We firstly analyze operating efficiency differences of life insurers with different ownerships, time series, and scales. Then we reach three important conclusions based on the empirical results: first, domestic life insurers’ operating efficiency is superior to foreign life insurers; second, scale has no direct correlation with operating efficiency; third, the trend of market operating efficiency is rising during this period with fluctuations because of economic shocks. Finally, we put forward some advices to enhance market efficiency..

کلیدواژه ها:

OPERATING EFFICIENCY ، LIFEINSURERS ، OWNERSHIP ، DEA ،