While companies in the field of e-commerce have long engaged in the collection of large amounts of customer data and consider them one of their most important assets, insurance companies have only recently started to collect customer data on a large scale (Smith, Dinev & Xu, 2011). Recently, insurance companies have developed tariffs which adjust premiums based on collected data about the insurant’s behavior (e.g. steps/day, visits to the gym etc.). Benefits like fitness courses or lower insurance rates are provided to encourage a healthy lifestyle and attract healthy customers. However, this model can only succeed, if customers are willing to disclose data. As many customers fear an intrusion of their privacy by companies and consider personal health data to be especially sensitive, this disclosure cannot be taken for granted (Anderson & Agarwal, 2011). The paper evaluates two main influencing factors for the willingness to disclose private health data (benefit offered to customers and sensitivity of data requested). It analyzes their effect by conducting an online scenario-based quasiexperiment with 408 participants. Participants are presented with six hypothetical offers by a health insurance (financial and non-financial benefits; low, medium, high data sensitivity) and indicate how they would respond to these offers in terms of data disclosure. We control for individual heterogeneity by including privacy concerns and trust as between-subject factors (Malhotra, Kim, & Agarwal, 2004). Our results indicate that the willingness to disclose health data can be increased by financial rewards at low and medium sensitivity levels. If information is highly sensitive, the willingness to provide data decreases and cannot be compensated by a tariff reduction. Health care providers should therefore carefully consider which data points they choose as mandatory to participate in personalized insurance tariffs, as they could easily scare off potential customers. In our study non-financial benefits (prevention courses) are not able to increase the willingness to disclose data as much as financial benefits. This could be due to a general preference for financial rewards or to the unknown quality of the courses offered.

The research aims to analyze the firm-specific and macroeconomic factors that affect insurance company’s financial performance. The research explores the variables that influence the financial performance of the United Arab Emirates (UAE)’ insurance companies. The analysis for determining financial performance considers the following variables: the firm’s age, retention ratio, capital adequacy, underwriting risk/loss ratio, financial-leverage, reinsurance dependency, and macro-economic factors such as GDP per capita, inflation rate considered as independent factors. The return-on-asset (ROA) is the key measuring indicator; it is regarded as the dependent variable for financial performance measures. The research focuses on secondary information obtained from insurance companies’ financial statements. The researcher targeted 18 insurance companies listed on the UAE stock exchanges for study purposes. The research examines the overall factors that influence the financial performance of an insurance company. For analysis of data, software package of social sciences (SPSS version 20) is used. The studies used correlation and multiple linear regression analysis to determine financial performance and their effects. The analysis suggests that there are important and constructive relationships between the size, capital adequacy, and reinsurance dependency, while loss ratio, retention ratio, and financial leverage indicate a major negative relationship. And there’s no link between GDP per capita and inflation.

This paper applies the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to compute the managerial efficiency of 30 insurance companies listed on the Saudi stock exchange for the duration of four years from 2015 to 2018. The companies taken as a sample of study included both conventional and Takaful insurance companies. The insurance sector of KSA is one of the largest sectors in the country, contributing a substantial percentage in the non-oil economy. Efficiency measurement and evaluation will provide a venue to introspect and benchmark frontiers to the sector. In the present study, we have utilized the basic Banker Charnes Cooper and Charnes Copper Rhodes models of DEA. Two inputs, namely, general & administrative expenses and policy & acquisition costs, and two outputs (Net premium earned and Investment Income & other incomes) were taken for efficiency calculations. The final outcomes of the study reveal that a good number of insurance companies operating in KSA are found to be efficient on managerial efficiency scale. Three firms remain the leader on the frontier of the managerial efficiency. And no company found with zero (0) efficiency or a negative efficiency. It is expected that the outcome of the study will provide benchmarks to managers and a road map to further improvement.