Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/25492 
Year of Publication: 
2006
Series/Report no.: 
CFS Working Paper No. 2006/26
Publisher: 
Goethe University Frankfurt, Center for Financial Studies (CFS), Frankfurt a. M.
Abstract: 
Mutual insurance companies and stock insurance companies are different forms of organized risk sharing: policyholders and owners are two distinct groups in a stock insurer, while they are one and the same in a mutual. This distinction is relevant to raising capital, selling policies, and sharing risk in the presence of financial distress. Up-front capital is necessary for a stock insurer to offer insurance at a fair premium, but not for a mutual. In the presence of an ownermanager conflict, holding capital is costly. Free-rider and commitment problems limit the degree of capitalization that a stock insurer can obtain. The mutual form, by tying sales of policies to the provision of capital, can overcome these problems at the potential cost of less diversified owners.
Subjects: 
Ownership Structure
Insurance
Qwner-Manager Conflict
Capital, Default
JEL: 
G22
G32
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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