2020 - SOA - Systemic Risk in China’s Insurance Industry

  • 2020 - SOA - Systemic Risk in China’s Insurance Industry, Society of Actuaries  ---  [BonkNote]  ---  55p
  • (p9) - Therefore, based on the identification of systemic risk sources that the Geneva Association, IAIS and other scholars have given....
  • the author investigated the origin of systemic risk in China’s insurance market from a micro perspective and believes.....
  • that the main sources of systemic risk in China’s insurance market are:
    • credit guarantee, minimum guarantee income of insurance contract, asset and liability mismatch, and alternative investment. 

  • (p10) - At the same time, the policyholder may have a run, which will have impacts on the market, the government supervision behavior, the company’s reputation decline, and so forth.
  • The payments at expiration and the surrender value of life insurance industry reached 937.9 billion yuan in 2015 and rose to 1.2 trillion yuan in 2016.
  • In the surrender value, high-cash-value products accounted for 55%. China’s insurance industry is expected to face more than 1.5 trillion yuan of maturity payment and surrender value by 2018 (Huibaoxian, 2017).
  • Although a run on the insurance industry is rare, it cannot be ignored.
  • Policyholders’ run once occurred in smaller insurers and in a normal economic environment, although what consequences it would cause in an extreme economic environment remains unknown.

  • (p10) - Under the pressure of low interest rates in China, along with the regulation of government, China’s insurance companies will face a dilemma of both maturity payment and surrender value.
  • It is necessary to prevent a run event; otherwise, insurance companies’ liquidity will be significantly affected, which will lead to fracturing of company funds in a severe case or even a financial crisis.