سرمایه فکری و عملکرد در صنعت بیمه عمر چین

This study applies the dynamic slack-based measure (DSBM) model to evaluate the performance of 34 Chinese life insurance companies for the period 2006–2010. This study also examines the relationship between intellectual capital and performance using the truncated regression approach. Our findings indicate that over the period of the study, the mean efficiency scores of life insurers are relatively stable, ranging from 0.905 to 0.973. We verify that the efficiency scores of the DSBM model differ significantly from those of the traditional data envelopment analysis (DEA) model, which supports the use of the DSBM model. Our regression analysis reveals that intellectual capitals are significantly positively associated with firm operating efficiency. Our findings corroborate prior studies which show that intellectual capital can make a company rich. In this dynamic business world, life insurers' managers should invest and fully utilize intellectual capital to gain a competitive advantage.

Since economic reforms were carried out in China, the Chinese insurance industry has grown rapidly. China's fastest-growing economy has grabbed worldwide attention, yet its overall growth rate has been dwarfed by that of the Chinese insurance industry. The Chinese life insurance market experienced particularly strong growth from 2007 to 2010. In 2011, the industry recorded a 6.8% rise in premium income, reaching RMB 969.98 billion (about USD 154 billion) [2], and it is expected to have a value of USD 237.5 billion in 2015, an increase of 66.3% over 2010. The largest segment of the Chinese insurance market is life insurance, accounting for 97.3% of the market's total value [3]. This segment has grown significantly with the number of life insurers increasing from 29 in 2004 to 61 in 2010.2 The Chinese insurance industry indeed holds enormous potential and offers opportunities to international insurers equipped with expertise and scale economies [4]. Nevertheless, mounting competition has caused domestic insurers to lose their advantage in efficiency. As a result, the gap between domestic and foreign insurers has narrowed since 2005 [5]. Yao et al. [6] point out that low productivity and low efficiency could stop the Chinese insurance industry from developing further. Many academicians and practitioners have studied whether efficient growth and development exist in the industry. Specifically, a considerable number of extant studies have investigated the performance of the industry by applying the data envelopment analysis (DEA) approach [7], [8] and [9]. Overall, prior literature suggests that the DEA technique is a valuable addition to traditional methods such as ratio analysis, because DEA is able to compare companies' multiple input–output data [10], [11], [12], [13], [14], [15], [16] and [17]. For a company that operates in a multidimensional setting, aggregating a set of financial ratios can be complicated and require imagination and experience [10], [15] and [17]. Another advantage of DEA is that it does not require any distributional assumptions. However, none of the prior studies specifically investigated the operating efficiency of a life insurer using a dynamic production process. In today's dynamic business world, life insurance companies must focus on changes in operating performance over long time periods. The capital3 allocation and planning processes are of central importance for life insurance companies [18]. Efficient resource allocation can provide a life insurer with a competitive advantage that can sustain its business over time. Several methods such as window analysis [19] and the Malmquist index [20] are effective for evaluating efficiency changes over time. However, to deal with the long-term dynamic process of a company, the dynamic slack-based measure (DSBM) model developed by Tone and Tsutsui [21] is particularly suitable because it incorporates carry-over activities into the model and enables researchers to measure period-specific efficiency based on long time optimization [20], [21], [22], [23] and [24]. Thus, this paper aims to examine the operating efficiency of China's insurance companies using the DSBM model in the first stage. In the Chinese insurance industry, a lot of talent and technical know-how have been outsourced [25]. The industry is a knowledge-intensive industry that has to count on intellectual capital (IC) for continuous growth since insurers equipped with IC are more competitive [4]. IC is the key success factor for a company's success [26], [27] and [28]. Thus, companies should focus on IC management to maximize long-run corporate wealth [29], [30] and [31]. While there are various application areas in the insurance industry [7], [8] and [9], no other published study has reported an association between IC and the operating efficiency of life insurers.4 In this study, we employ the Value Added Intellectual Coefficient (VAIC™) to measure IC. To further investigate whether Chinese insurance companies are able to improve their efficiency through IC investment, this paper utilizes truncated regression with a bootstrapping procedure introduced by Simar and Wilson [32] and [33], which better describes the efficiency scores in the second-stage regression analysis. Although research on insurers' efficiency has been increasing, this is the first paper to employ the DSBM model to evaluate the efficiency performance of Chinese life insurers by using a dynamic process. Furthermore, we are the first to apply Simar and Wilson's [32] and [33] approach to testing the relationship between intellectual capital and firm operating efficiency for the Chinese life insurance industry. Our analysis is particularly relevant to life insurers' managers, who may be interested in knowing whether investment in intellectual capital serves as a key performance driver. The study is also significant in that it may provide insights into potential avenues of policy improvement. Since utilizing IC is essential to improve efficiency, policy makers, who are capable of influencing the direction of the Chinese life insurance business environment, may make changes to the existing policies to promote the development of IC in the life insurance industry. Even more significant, policy makers may promote greater understanding of the IC concept to increase investment planning policy at the corporate level. Since the contribution of the life insurance industry to China's economic growth is substantial, continuous investment in IC by Chinese life insurers may have positive consequences. The remainder of this study proceeds as follows. Section 2 presents a review of the literature, followed by hypotheses development, while Section 3 describes the methodology and procedures adopted for data collection. The empirical results of the various analyses are presented in Section 4. Finally, conclusions are presented and suggestions are made for further research.

The academic literature on measuring the performance of the insurance industry has grown significantly. This study has employed the DSBM model, a dynamic DEA model, to analyze the performance of the Chinese life insurance companies, setting this study apart from previous studies that merely apply either SFA or traditional DEA models. We employ a Wilcoxon signed rank test, with a null hypothesis that no differences exist between the efficiency scores of the BCC model and those of the DSBM model. We always reject the null hypothesis. Under the DSBM model, the median values of the Chinese life insurers from 2006 to 2010 are all consistently over 1. Moreover, we regress the operating efficiency scores on the exogenous factors, specifically intellectual capital. The truncated regression results prove that intellectual capital, which includes human capital, structural capital, and financial capital, have positively significant impacts on firm operating efficiency. The outcome confirms the importance of intellectual capital since the dimensions of intellectual capital are complementary. Although there are advantages to using the DSBM model, it is nevertheless particularly challenging to hand collect the proprietary information of Chinese life insurance companies. When more information becomes available, future research could probably examine the association of other exogenous factors, such as corporate governance, with corporate performance.