Do bank-affiliated P&C insurers perform better? An empirical investigation

This article analyses the impact of bank affiliation on the performance of P&C insurance companies by examining a sample of Italian P&C insurers operating during the 2005–2015 time frame. After completing a descriptive analysis to single out bank-affiliated insurers’ specific features, we perform a multivariate regression in order to ascertain whether affiliation affects operating profitability. Our findings show that bank affiliation at best does not entail any cost advantage while altering the influence of underwriting results on firm performance. The way this happens deviates from what has been found for life insurance operations, where bank affiliation also has an impact. Our results suggest that the competitive levers that bank-affiliated insurers exploit in the P&C business are different from those adopted by other firms and that these levers are specific to non-life insurance activity.