2006, Vol.17, No.1

Journal of Insurance and Finance 2023 KCI Impact Factor : 0.59

pISSN : 2384-3209
https://journal.kci.go.kr/kiri

This article measures productivity growth and efficiency change in Korean life insurance industry since the 1991 financial year. DEA and Malmquist productivity index were used to measure efficiency and productivity. To measure productivity and efficiency, both operation income from insurance operations and investment income from investment activities were chosen as output variables, while both operation expense from insurance operations and operation expense from investment activities were chosen as input variables. According to analyses on efficiency and productivity, efficiencies in the Korean life insurance industry has dropped a lot before the financial crisis in 1997, and these low efficiencies has resulted in two times restructuring of the life insurance industry led by the government after the financial crisis. However, overall efficiencies of the industry has risen during recent two years, for the year 2003 the efficiency was 0.630 and for the year 2004 the efficiency was 0.742, respectively. For the period from 1993 to 2004 productivity growth had dropped 5.6%, of which efficiency change had risen 1.3% but frontier change has dropped 4.8%. Foreign owned insurance companies expanded their market shares due to superior technical efficiency, especially in scale efficiency, compared to domestic insurance companies. The difference in market shares between large companies and small and mid-sized companies which consist of both domestic and foreign companies has narrowed recently due to progress in both pure-technical and scale efficiencies led by foreign companies. Of the two effects, scale efficiency was dominant. In conclusion, the Korean life insurance industry needs optimal economies scale by curtailing overcapacity to maintain competitiveness in its already opened domestic market.

The purpose of this paper is to suggest the distribution strate gies based onanalysing the preference for the channels and products. We anal yse the motorinsurance and long-term savings plan. We focus on the consumers changing thedistribution channels in the analysis of the motor insurance an d the potentialdemand in the long-term savings plan.The correspondence analysis and the homogeneity analysis are em ployed. Theresults are summarized as follow. Firstly, while the self-emplo yed and the bluecolors prefer the traditional channels, the white colors prefer s the direct marketing.Secondly, some consumers maintain their current channel, namely the traditionalchannel, but others want to change it to the direct marketing. The maintainers arethe people living in a small town, the self-employed, the blue colors, persons in theirforties. The white colors are expected to change the traditiona l channel to the directmarketing. Thirdly, the demand of consumers not buying the long -term savingsplan is expected to be higher than that of them who already bou ght the product. Sothe new demand for the long-term savings plan will occur. Espec ially, the potentialfor the health plan of long-term savings is expected to be grea t. The new consumerswill be the people in the lower bracket of income in the accide nt plan of long-termsavings, the blue colors and the people in the lower bracket of income in the healthplan of long-term savings, and the lower bracket of income in t he general plan oflong-term savings. We also expect the new customers such as the blue colors andthe people in the lower bracket of income, and the persons in t heir twenties in theaccident and health product.

This study empirically investigates whether product information characteristicsaffect insurance consumer satisfaction based on questionnaires from 20 year ormore old health insurance consumers. The product information ch aracteristicsinclude consumers’product comparing tendency, information sourc e and productcomprehensiveness. This study finds that product comparing tend ency andinformation source are affected by consumer characteristics suc h as age, education,residence, and income. Also it is found that consumers are more satisfied when theycompare health insurance products prior to their purchasing dec ision. On the otherhand, consumer satisfaction is positively related to product co mprehensiveness.Accordingly, this study suggests that insurance companies shoul d employ the mosteffective and efficient product information distribution measur es to fit consumers’characteristics in order to enhance consumer satisfaction.