ABSTRACT Residential real estate, in recent times, has attracted a lot of attention due to its strong economic performance which is mainly as a result of increasing demand for housing and additional diversification benefits offered to investors in the region; making real estate investment extremely lucrative. Nonetheless many investors have doubts about the prudence of investing in emerging markets. In particular it may be felt that the expected returns offered in the countries of the Africa...
ABSTRACT The purpose of the study is to investigate susceptible risk activities of insurers from the new risk-based supervision framework and determining whether a significant difference exists between the inherent risk exposures of insurers and their risk management control functions. The development of better and effective strategies for prioritizing resources as a way improving the financial health of insurance companies coupled with risk management controls to avoid insurers’ insolvency...
ABSTRACT Pension scheme providers in Ghana adopt different asset allocation (the proportion of pension funds that need to be invested into different assets like equities and bonds) as an investment strategy. For instance, SSNIT seems to adopt a 60% bond allocation (fixed income investment) and 30% equity allocation (non-fixed income investment) as an investment strategy over the last decade. This study investigates the role of fixed income in pension schemes investment in Ghana by specifical...
ABSTRACT This study investigates determinants of financial health of Ghanaian life insurance companies, a market that has experienced significant change in recent years. It examines the solvency of life insurance companies and the current system used by the National Insurance Commission (NIC) to monitor solvency of life insurance companies in Ghana. Secondary data obtained from financial reports of 16 sampled life insurance companies from 2007 to 2013 were analysed using the unbalanced panel ...
ABSTRACT Growth is an important value driver for life insurance firms. Due to the risk pooling nature of their business it is necessary for their business operations to generate the volume of business necessary to ensure efficient pooling of risks. This study investigated the factors influencing the growth of life insurance business in Ghana. The study is based on panel data of life insurers‘ gross written premium, total assets, age of the business, total commissions earned by their markete...
ABSTRACT This research investigates the interrelation impact between oil price volatility and bilateral exchange rate volatility of selected oil – dependent countries and the causality pattern between them in the pre – and post 2008 -2009 global financial recession. Exchange rate volatility is for economies that are dependent on oil either for major industrial activities or for fiscal revenue. Thus, currencies exchange rates volatility examined in the study are for the Ghana cedi, Nigeria...
ABSTRACT The general objective of this study was to estimate the technical efficiency of the Ghanaian insurance firms and also to investigate the levels and patterns of these efficiencies over the study period. Annual reports were obtained from National Insurance Commission (NIC), the Ghanaian insurance regulator on a sample of insurance companies from 2007 to 2012. Basically, the study was quantitative in nature where an optimization technique was used. Specifically multi-directional efficie...
ABSTRACT This study examines the effect of competition on the solvency of non-life insurers in Ghana. It further examines the role of cost efficiency in the competition- solvency nexus. The study uses firm level yearly data from the National Insurance Commission on 26 non-life insurers from 2008 to 2017. Using ordinary least squares panel corrected standard error, generalized least squares and systems generalized methods of moments, the study reveals that market power (competition) enhances (...
ABSTRACT The study investigated asset allocation of defined contribution (DC) plan in Ghana using the Tier 2 Master Trust Occupational Pension Scheme (MTOPS) as a case study. The focus of the study was to compare optimal asset allocation solutions under quantitative restrictions and prudent person’s principle and further assess the risk exposure of portfolio returns using CVaR. The financial market invested by MTOPS predominantly consisted of six financial assets: government securities and ...
ABSTRACT The aim of this study is to investigate the impact of risk factors on shareholder value (proxied by shareholder value ratio, which is computed as EVA divided by capital invested) in Ghanaian banks. To account for the persistence of shareholder value, we used the System Generalised Method of Moments technique for a panel of 25 Ghanaian banks that covers the period 2007-2013. Results indicate that the three risk factors that must be on the top of the priority list of banks in Ghana in...
ABSTRACT This study examines perception that the public have about life insurance companies and their services in Ghana. The objectives of the study were to examine public awareness and perception of life insurance services in the Volta Region, identify factors that influence patronage of life insurance in the Volta Region and evaluate the barriers/constraints that affect patronage of life insurance services in Volta. The study was a cross-sectional conducted on 150 simple randomly selected r...
ABSTRACT This study investigated determinants of Cash Flow in the insurance industry, explained the timevarying patterns of Cash Flows and forecasted future Cash Flows for Cash Flow risk management. Sample financial data of 21 non-life insurance firms in Ghana from the year 2007 to 2015 was used for this Study. Statistical analyses were made using a combination of pooled ordinary least squares methods, principal component analysis and a novel Factor Augmented Autoregressive (FAAR) Model to in...
ABSTRACT Purpose _ The purpose of this thesis is to analyse how risk culture influences a firm‘s risk taking and control decisions (Underwriting risk). Design/methodology/approach _ A sample of 90 employees from eighteen life insurance companies in Ghana was used in this Study. The different propositions proposed are formulated using exploratory factor analysis and the ordinary least square regression on a cross- sectional basis. Findings The results obtained show that, excessive controls ...
ABSTRACT This study analyses the impact of firm-specific and macroeconomic factors on investment risk taking behaviour of insurers and examine how insurers’ risk taking influences the financial performance of insurance companies in Ghana. The study employs a panel regression model for the general analysis using a quantitative data sample of 16 non-life and 12 life insurance companies’, randomly selected from the National Insurance Commission database over 7 years period (2008-2014). The a...
ABSTRACT Employing the VAR (1) model to predict future asset returns and generating multiple scenarios of these returns using the Monte Carlo simulation technique with 10,000 iterations we analyze the normal contribution rate and associated total pension costs for different strategic asset allocations of the SSNIT scheme and in the process we constrain the shortfall risk by integrating a conditional value at risk limit. Using MatLab software we iterate to identify the optimal normal contribu...