The objectives were to evaluate the prudential supervision of UK building societies and to produce a blueprint for reform. The cases for and against regulation with particular reference to financial institutions and building societies were evaluated and the objectives of regulation were subsequently incorporated into a building society questionnaire. The supervision of societies since the Building Societies Act 1986 and five case studies were examined with respect to five objectives of supervision. A series of semi-structured interviews were conducted with members of the industry.

The subject of this work is to describe the steps of the process of implementation of macro prudential policy which have been made up to now and to assess the efficiency of the policy. The work offers the reader a comprehensive view of the topic. The work is divided into three parts. The first part deals with overall characteristic of macro prudential policy. The second part describes the macro prudential tools. In the last part, the efficiency of macro prudential policy and its tools is evaluated. The aim of this work is to provide the reader with a through view on macro prudential policy and to highlight the problematic parts of the implementation of the policy. Furthermore, it aims to describe the efficiency and effectiveness of the policy and its tools.

Abstract Based on the underlying intentions of life insurance, if managers of insurance companies truly understands the importance of insurance to the society, their management philosophy would be grounded on care for the needs of the public and implement such philosophy as their management objective. Yet, according to the year 2004 statistics published by the Life Insurance Association of the Republic of China, the average insured value of new life insurance contracts is merely NTD 780,000 in 2004. The average insured value of effective contracts is NTD 780,000, while the ratio of insurance coverage is 166.3% (effective contract divided by total population). This indicates that the average payout for every death is only NTD 1,290,000, indicating significant inadequacy of life cover. There is a popular saying in the insurance business, ¡§birds would be found where there are trees, and business achievements would be found where there are people¡¨. The majority of sales departments in life insurance companies focus on achievement of new contracts; new staff will bring sales to the company. Increased rates of ineffective policies arising from low retention rate of new salespeople, lack of professionalism among salespeople, or inadequate service were not considered. Therefore, insurance salespeople are not only the key elements in the business achievements of insurance companies, but also the key personnel underlying long term performance indices. The objectives of this study are: 1)What are the characteristics of salesperson that exhibit excellent performance? 2)Which recruiting channel recruits the best insurance salesperson? 3)What are the methodologies for recruiting and selecting insurance salesperson? 4)What are the impacts of such recruiting methods on the performance of the insurance company? 5)Are the insurance salesperson recruited through such channels appropriate to the needs of the company? A case study is adopted as the research method. The subject company ¡V Prudential of Taiwan (POT), clearly understands that business performance is grounded on having professional insurance salespeople. Hence the long term business objective of POT is to recruit and nurture professional life insurance planners, which is different to the management approach adopted by majority of the insurance companies in Taiwan. The recruiting and selecting methodology of the case company was studied. The business philosophy, sources of recruitment, recruiting and selecting methods and processes were reviewed. Furthermore, in-depth staff interviews to gain their viewpoints on recruitment were conducted. Results of the study into the recruitment methodology and interviews were compared to reflect the results of long term key performance index of insurance company. The findings of this study are: the long term performance index of POT, namely staff retention rate, individual average insured value per new policy, insurance company retention rate, persistency rate of the policy, rate of passing staff qualification tests and, MDRT membership qualification rate, the incremental rate of the premium income, were all rated above competitors. ¡iKeywords¡j Prudential of Taiwan¡ALife Insurance¡ARecruiting¡ASelecting¡ALifePlanner

Thesis (M.B.A.)--Boston University

Au cours des siècles passés, la plupart des pays émergents, ont connu de graves crises bancaires. Depuis lors, ces pays nécessitent pour tant une attention particulière étant donné qu’ils sont caractérises par des marches financiers sous développes, une opacité accrue au sein de systèmes bancaires fragiles, un volume important de créances douteuses et litigieuses et parfois un environnement légal, institutionnel et réglementaire inadéquat. De là s'est posée la question sur le rôle de la réglementation bancaire comme un mécanisme indispensable pour prévenir le risque systémique, pour éviter les conséquences négatives de paniques et au maintien de la stabilité financière. Ce qui nous amène dans un premier temps, à étudier les causes et les facteurs explicatifs de la fragilité du système bancaire dans les pays émergents. Ensuite, nous citons une revue de la littérature théorique sur les fondements de la crise bancaire. Dans un second temps, nous présentons les fondements théoriques de la réglementation bancaire et son évolution. Suit à l’étude des aspects théoriques sur les fondements de la réglementation bancaire, nous allons étudier les effets de cadre réglementaire et du supervisons sur la probabilité d’occurrence des crises bancaires dans les pays émergents. Ensuite, nous effectuons une analyse descriptive des spécificités réglementaires et de supervision des secteurs bancaires dans les pays émergents, sur 21 pays d’Asie de l’Est, d’Europe et Asie centrale, et de Moyen orient et Afrique de Nord. Afin de compléter cette étude, nous réalisons un modèle Logit pour déterminer les variables explicatives de supervision et de réglementation qui expliquent le plus les crises bancaires. / Most of the emerging countries have experienced severe banking crises over the centuries which require them now to pay more attention. These countries are characterized by underdeveloped financial markets, increased opacity in fragile banking systems, a huge amount of bad and doubtful debts, and sometimes an inadequate legal, institutional and regulatory environment. This rises up the question of the role of banking regulation as an essential mechanism needed to prevent systemic risk, and to avoid the negative consequences of maintaining a financial stability. Seeking the answer for the latter question, we study here the causes and factors that explain well the fragility of the banking system in emerging countries, including a literature study on the theoretical foundations of the banking crisis, and the evolution of banking regulation. Moreover, a study on the effects of regulatory framework, and oversee of the banking crises probability in emerging markets is presented. Later, we perform a descriptive analysis of the specific regulatory and supervision of banking systems in emerging countries. This includes 21 countries from Europe East and Central, South Asia, and North Africa. Finally, we introduce a new logit model to determine the predictions of supervision and regulation that explain most of the banking crises in the presented countries.

The subject matter of this thesis is a treatise on legal regulation of bank activities. I have chosen this topic for its recency in a connection with global financial crisis and also in a connection with application of new European legislation in the field of bank regulation. Activities of banks belong among one of the most regulated market areas because eventual failures of banks are very dangerous not only for a functioning of the bank system but also for a huge amount of other subjects dependent on proper financial factoring. An importance of bank regulation is also given by a large amount of depositors who have their money deposited with the bank and who can lose their funds in the case of a failure of the bank unless the institutes of the financial safety net will provide compensation. Regulatory rules impact on banks already in the phase of their origin. There are strict conditions for an obtaining of the bank license from a reason of a prevention of an entry of unhealthy business subjects to bank market to avoid problems prior to their creation. An exit from bank market is also regulated in the form of a different legal regulation of insolvency and liquidation of the bank. The thesis is divided into eleven chapters which are divided into several subsequent subchapters. The thesis starts with...

Regulation of commercial banking by the central bank The aim of my thesis is to clarify the issue of banking regulation of commercial banks in the Czech Republic and to analyze their functioning. Due to the extent of the topic of this thesis I focused mainly on prudential rules for banks, which are one of the main instruments of banking regulation. The introduction defines the Czech banking sector. There are described both of its general characteristics, as well as the particular entities that are present, including the Czech National Bank and its competence in the area of banking regulation and supervision. The second chapter deals with the banking regulation itself. As an introduction it is generally analyzed in theoretical level especially with regard to the reasons for its existence. Further there is also described the current legislation in the Czech Republic in detail, including its link with the rules of international and European law. Then there are presented all its essential parts and its influence to banks is analyzed. The third chapter deals with prudential rules in detail. As an introduction the concept of prudential business is analyzed and the risks of the banking business are described which represents the main aspect of this part of regulation. Further there are analyzed the...

L’objet de cette thèse est de comprendre en quoi l’instabilité financière est un phénomène inhérent au cycle et en quoi la relation entre la politique monétaire et le secteur bancaire joue un rôle central dans son explication. Nous mettons en évidence de nouveaux canaux de transmission de la politique monétaire, notamment les canaux de la prise de risque et du capital bancaire. Une idée forte de la thèse est que le crédit productif est évincé dans les deux phases du cycle au profit des actifs risqués dans la phase ascendante et des valeurs refuge en phase descendante. Notre démarche est alors de construire un modèle théorique qui rend compte de cette problématique et dont les hypothèses s’appuient à la fois sur une revue de la littérature abondante et l’observation de faits stylisés. / The aim of the thesis is to analyze financial instability. This latter is explained by its link with the cycle and the relation between the monetary policy and the banking sector. We highlight new transmission mechanisms of the monetary policy, especially the risk taking channel and the bank capital channel. The principal idea of the thesis is an eviction of the productive credit in good and bad times. After a survey, we build a theoretical model to capture the reaction of the banking sector during the cycle.

The volatility of house prices can raise systemic risks in the housing market due to the vulnerability of the banking and mortgage sectors to such fluctuations. Moreover, the extreme increases in housing markets have been considered a key feature of the last economic crisis and the run-up to it. Such increases, however, came to a sudden halt immediately before the crisis or directly it began. Despite the recent growth of scholarly work on the role of house price behaviour in economic stability, fundamental questions have yet to be answered: for instance: (i) how far do the nonlinear models outperform the linear models? And how does such nonlinearity explain the asymmetry in the cycle; (ii) what are the main characteristics of house price cycles, and how do they differ over time; and (iii) what kind of policy intervention would stop a real estate boom? This thesis, made up of three empirical essays, aims to take a step forward in answering these questions. The first essay examines whether house prices in large metropolitan areas such as London, New York and Hong Kong follow linear or nonlinear models. The Smooth Transition Autoregressive model was used on a sample of monthly data over the period 1996:1 to 2015:12. The results indicate that linear models are unsuitable for modelling the housing market for the chosen cities. Moreover, strong evidence indicates that real estate prices are largely nonlinear and can well be modelled using a logistic smooth transition model (LSTAR). Estimation results also show different degrees of asymmetry. In particular, the speed of transition between the expansion and contraction of house prices is greater in London than it is in Hong Kong while the speed of transition between boom and bust in New York house prices is the slowest. Further, the forecast results suggest that the LSTAR outdoes the linear model in out-of-sample performance. The second essay investigates the main features of house price cycles in the same major metropolitan areas by providing a reasonable level of discrimination between the cyclical decomposition techniques available for capturing suitable measurements for house price cycles. Through a sample of large cities in several countries, it is shown that the model-based filter is suitable for capturing the main features of house price cycles and the results confirm that these cycles are centred at low frequency. Moreover, there is evidence of substantial variation in the duration and amplitude of these cycles both across cities and over time. The third essay provides evidence that real house prices are significantly affected by financial stability policies. Considering the Hong Kong experience, the results show strong evidence of duration dependences in both the upswing and downswing phases of the cycle. Moreover, the time taken to reach the turning point increases dramatically as the cycle proceeds. The findings also suggest that there is feedback between house price volatility and the policies that affect the housing market. Accordingly, house prices respond with more volatility to any change in the loan to value and lending policy indicators (ignoring the sign of this shock). Finally, the evidence of asymmetry suggests that unanticipated house price increases are more destabilising than unanticipated falls in house prices.

John Rawls developed principles of justice to guide the fair allocation of resources in a society. However, his principles did not take into consideration a society’s differing health needs. Norman Daniels attempted to extend Rawlsian principles of justice to apply to the allocation of health resources. In Just Health, Daniels argued that, under certain circumstances, an age-based allocation of health resources can be prudent. He proposed the Prudential Lifespan Account (PLA) to defend age-rationing against claims that it would lead to favoring one age-group over another. In this paper, I analyze Daniels’s PLA and argue that societal aging poses a significant threat to its effectiveness. I then examine and critique alternate theories to extend Rawlsian principles of justice to account for health, specifically those proposed by Dennis McKerlie and Hugh Lazenby.