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This paper investigates the spread of aggressive corporate tax reporting by modeling a firm's decision to adopt the corporate-owned life insurance (COLI) shelter. I use a sample of known COLI participants to examine whether certain firm characteristics are associated with the decision to adopt a COLI shelter. I find some evidence that firms with higher performance-matched discretionary accruals are more likely to adopt a COLI shelter, suggesting a positive relation between aggressive financial reporting and aggressive tax reporting. I also find that firms with greater capital market visibility are less likely to adopt a COLI shelter, consistent with a potential reputational cost for being associated with aggressive tax avoidance activities. Further, my results suggest that COLI adopters are generally R&D intensive firms with low leverage and few foreign operations. In addition to firm specific characteristics, I consider two explanations for the spread of COLI adoption motivated by theory on diffusion of innovations and institutional isomorphism. I investigate whether firms imitate prior COLI adopters and whether COLI adoption spreads through common auditors. My results are not consistent with an imitation explanation. Further, my results suggest that having the same auditor as a prior COLI adopter does not increase the likelihood that a firm will adopt COLI. / text

When selecting life-insurance a person has to rely on subjective decisions of insurance agents or try to analyze all existing life-insurance products for himself. Not only there is a considerable amount of life-insurance products, but also their rules differ significantly. Therefore, a person who wants to choose the best life-insurance for himself must dedicated vast time to this task and have a great understanding of life-insurance in general. The outlined best life-insurance problem is solved by designing the Best Life Insurance Selection System, which is able to assess person’s finance liabilities, determine which type of life-insurance and on what conditions he needs, and where he is able to purchase it. The Most Suitable Life-Insurance Selection System designed in this work was subdivided into the following subsystems: Information about Life-Insurance, Finance Liabilities Assessment, Life-Insurance Type Selection, Conditions of Life-Insurance Selection, and the Best Life-Insurance Selection subsystems. The Life-Insurance Type Selection subsystem design was based on CommonKADS knowledge engineering methodology.

The research centred around the fact that the existing methods of distributing life and investment products was inefficient and it was decided to research the issue to determine whether a more suitable cost effective method could be developed. Currently the distribution of life and investment products is very expensive and therefore an alternate method of distribution was being explored. This was also endorsed in a survey conducted by the Financial Services Board were it was found that in order for financial services company to survive and compete new models need to be developed to compete in this increasingly globalised industry. Life assurance and investment products in South Africa and elsewhere in the world is sold by agents who are employed by the life assurance and investment companies. More recently other distribution channels have emerged and these include the internet, direct mail and call centres. The share of business that is obtained through these means is also an interesting feature to explore when investigating the methods used by new entrants to this multi billion rand industry. The situation prevailing in the local industry is that independent brokers secures a contract with the life company's and this places the broker in a position to market the company's products through the use of business consultants. There are significant costs associated with the current model of distributing the companies' products. These are broker consultant salaries, car allowances and traveling expenses, entertainment expenses, overriding commission on the business sold by the broker they servIce, management and support staff expenses and related expenses. The proposed model will have following characteristics. • Have distribution contracts with all independent brokers. • Using the franchise methods of training and recruiting business consultants. • Variable costing methods in determining payments for service delivered. • This method would also significantly reduce the cost of distribution by the new entrants into this multi billion rand industry. In the final analysis it was shown that the third party distributor would make a difference to the manner in which life and investments products is distributed in this dynamically changing industry. / Theses (MBA)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, 2006.

This study which is located in Durban, South Africa examines the life insurance Industry in South Africa, the trends, local and international, and strategic issues and the thinking of the industry leaders that will impact upon current distribution business models. The impact of these on the role of the Financial Planner is highlighted, providing evidence of the international success of alternative models for the distribution of professional financial advice. The literature review in this study suggests that, from international experience, the weakest link in the present distribution chain of life insurance is the Financial Planner because their means of remuneration is currently being subjected to extensive reduction by regulators. As the South African industry transforms as a result of price cutting and regulatory pressures on downscaling of existing commission structures, the Financial Planner will bear the brunt of this resizing to the form of substantial reductions in their earnings, resulting either Financial Planners exiting the industry, or seeking an alternative business model than that of commission remuneration from the sale of life insurance products It is against this backdrop that this submission examines three critical questions: How will the transformation of the South African life insurance industry, changing needs and demands of consumer's impact upon the role of the Financial Planner in the financial planning industry? What are the consumer's experiences, expectations and perceptions of Financial Planners? What must Financial Planners and their representative bodies do in order to ensure the continuity and independence of the role of the Financial Planner in the distribution of professional financial planning advice? These critical questions are investigated using a quantitative research instrument, i.e. a structured questionnaire, the results of which are statistically analysed using the SPSS system. The main findings provide substantial evidence that trends and experiences from the UK and USA will have a similar impact on the South African Financial Planner's future in the present life insurance business model. The predictions, teachings and motivations of relevant authors is for Financial Planners to adopt a holistic expanded business model offering Life Planning to consumers which provides the Financial Planner with an alternative to remaining in the present business model. The study further reveals that consumers attach a high value to the intellectual abilities and to the role the Financial Planner plays in providing them with professional financial advice. It further confirms that without the Financial Planner, life insurance companies have no real link to the consumers of life insurance products because the consumer is dependent upon the Financial Planner for professional financial advice. / Thesis (MBA)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Westville, 2006.

The purpose of this study was to examine the causes and historical impact of the Armstrong investigation into the practices of the life insurance industry. As a long-time admirer of Charles Evans Hughes, and a serious student of the history of insurance, I found the opportunity of looking into an important part of Hughes's early career and the most significant event in the annals of insurance history to be especially compelling, particularly as my research came to show the need to re-assess much of what previously has been written about the episode.In addition to basic resource materials available at Bracken Library, I found that extensive use of contemporary newspaper accounts, principally those in the Chicago Tribune andNew York Times, revealed the vivid images that caught so well the attention and imagination of the American public in 1905. I also have made valuable use of James Hazen Hyde's personal papers in the archival section of Baker Library at Harvard University. This important collection of private correspondence and records has been largely overlooked by insurance historians writing about the period. Those who have written about the New York Times also have ignored the Hyde material, most significantly the items linking the financial condition of the New York Times with the Equitable Life Assurance Society, the principal firm in the great financial scandal. That embarrassing link explains the newspaper's restrained and even bland reporting and editorials concerning the unfolding events.Little mention is given the Armstrong investigation in the insurance textbooks used in American colleges and universities. The occasional references to the most important public investigative body of its time are limited to phrases beginning with "because of" or "prior to" and rarely provide more than a minimal amount of background explanation. Certainly more of the history of insurance needs to be taught.While institutions of higher learning offer students the opportunity to study the history of many subjects, such as art, music, medicine, law, and economics, none of the more than two hundred universities in the country offering insurance courses includes study of the history of insurance. Of the many rich and intriguing events in the realm of insurance, the story of the Armstrong investigation, with its startling findings and resulting widespread reform legislation, should serve well as the nucleus of an insurance history text. Completion of such a textbook indeed will finish the work started by this thesis. / Department of History

My dissertation involves a critique of the concept of life or seimei as it emerged in modern use during the Meiji era (1868-1912). Specifically, I have outlined the conditions of possibility for thinking seimei at particular moments in the development of the modern, market-centered Japanese nation-state in historical and literary terms such that I can begin to use these conditions to think its impossibilities. In short, I argue that a central condition of possibility for thinking life in its modern, historical form is a process of individuation that takes hold of and shapes bodies at an ontological level. By critiquing life and its ontology of individuation, I unearth the traces of an impossible “apriori collectivism” - that is, a collectivism not merely reducible to a congregation of individuals, but originally collective – buried under the calls for individual freedom, self-help, and industrialization that were at the heart of the Meiji era’s modernization project. I track this apriori collectivism in a lineage relating (through non-relation) the mutual aid societies or mujin-kô of the Edo period to the life insurance industry of the Meiji 10s and 20s. I then use this material history of life as backdrop to my study of the literary trends in the latter decades of the Meiji era, and end with a consideration of the political and aesthetic implications seimei has for thought by taking up a study of Iwano Hômei’s Shinpiteki hanjûshugi (Mystical Demi-animalism).

本篇文章目的是研究在1996 年至2004 年間，臺灣地區人壽保險業之競爭程度狀況，並希望藉以探討導致臺灣整體壽險市場經營困難的主要原因，到底是因為處於過度競爭的局面，還是受到市場經濟不景氣或政策利空等因素所影響？這些問題的探究可讓臺灣在往後金融發展政策上提供重要的參考基礎。本研究以Rosse-Panzar 非結構模型作為研究臺灣地區壽險業的競爭程度證據，發現1996年至2000 年壽險市場是處於完全競爭(PC)，但2001 年至2004 年均拒絶市場存在獨占力(M)或完全競爭(PC)之虛無假設，顯示該年度為壟斷性競爭市場(MC)。 / The purpose of this paper is to examine the degree of the competition on the life insurance industry in Taiwan from 1996 to 2004 and to investigate thereason why the whole Taiwan life insurance market operates so difficultly.Perhaps it was because of the excessive competition, the economic downturn, bad policy, and some other factors? Exploration of these issues can provide an important reference on the financial development policy to Taiwan Insurance Supervisory Authority in the future. This paper use the Rosse-Panzar non-structural model as an evidence to support the result, It proved that the Taiwan life insurance market was in the perfect competition (PC) during the period of 1996 to 2000. In addition, from the year 2001 to 2004, it rejected the null hypothesis of monopoly power (M) and perfect competition (PC), indicating that the monopolistic competition market (MC) existed.

[pt] O estudo individualizado da mortalidade em planos de previdência e de seguros de vida é um assunto de crescente interesse tanto por parte das seguradoras quanto do órgão regulador destes segmentos, a Superintendência de Seguros Privados – SUSEP. Neste sentido, o LABMA/UFRJ calculou tábuas de referência para o mercado segurador, segregadas por sexo e cobertura, utilizando informações sobre 80% dos segurados das companhias seguradoras que atuam no Brasil. A teoria econômica prediz que existe um viés nas saídas dos planos com cobertura por sobrevivência e por morte, o que ocasiona uma diferença nas taxas de mortalidades entre o subgrupo que abandona seus planos e o grupo remanescente, e que esta diferença é variável no tempo, dependendo do número de anos decorrido desde que o indivíduo deixou o plano: assim como as tábuas seletas convergem para uma situação geral, a hipótese é a de que, passado algum tempo, a mortalidade dos indivíduos que saíram do plano converge para o mesmo nível dos que ficaram. Valendo-nos da mesma base de dados utilizada pelo LABMA/UFRJ para a construção das tábuas de referência para o mercado segurador, bem como da base de dados de registro de óbitos da previdência social, o objetivo dessa dissertação é a verificação da existência de seleção adversa nas saídas dos planos com cobertura por sobrevivência ou morte por meio da construção de tábuas seletas de mortalidade para os indivíduos que abandonam seus planos. / [en] The study of mortality in individual pension plans and life insurance is a subject of growing interest both for insurers as well as for the regulator of these segments, the Superintendence of Private Insurance - SUSEP. In this sense, LABMA/UFRJ calculated mortality tables used as a reference for the insurance market, segregated by sex and coverage, using information covering 80% of the insured population originated from insurance companies operating in Brazil. Economic theory predicts that there is a bias on the outputs of plans with coverage for survival and death, which causes a difference in rates of mortality among those who quit the plan and the remaining group. This difference varies over time, depending on the time lag since the individual quit the plan: as select tables converge to the general level, the assumption here is that after some time, the mortality of individuals who left the plan converges to the same level of those who remained. Based on the same database used by LABMA/UFRJ for the construction of tables of reference for the insurance market as well as the database of deaths from the Social Security Administration, the goal of this study is to test the existence of adverse selection on the outputs of the plans with coverage for survival or death by means of constructing select mortality tables for individuals who quit their plans.

Everyone's life is threatened by many risks that we try to eliminate them or to reduce their consequences. These risks are unexpected so we do not know when they strikes and change our lives. Some risks either directly affect our own lives or the lives of our beloved, or the standard of living of our loved ones. In my thesis, I will focus on the risks associated with injury or civilisation disease that often bring, apart from health complications, also financial problems due to the decline of employment income. To minimize the impacts of the income decline, most people pay for various financial products. Most often, they effect some type of life insurance. In my work, I will introduce basic principles of insurance, types of insurance focusing above all on life insurance. Using questionnaires, I will try to identify how many people have or have not effected any type of life insurance, what type of life insurance people usually effect, whether the risks which could threaten them would be covered by particular insurance according to their needs. I will also set several hypotheses and I will test them statistically to obtain relevant and valid answers.