An Integrated DEA and PROMETHEE II Method for Complete Ranking: An Application in Life-Insurance Sector

Abstract

Globally, insurance and takaful companies play a crucial role in economic and financial development of a country. Malaysia’s insurance sector has undergone substantial changes compared to two decades ago. Due to intense competition observed in Malaysian insurance industry, efficiency measurement and a complete efficiency ranking of insurance companies are very important for the decision makers so that necessary changes and improvement can be made. Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) is a non-parametric method that has been acknowledged as an effective method to measure the efficiency of homogeneous decision-making units (DMUs). The main advantage of DEA is its ability to handle multiple inputs and outputs. However, standard DEA has poor discrimination power since it generates too many efficient units especially when the number of DMUs under study is insufficient in comparison to number of inputs and outputs. It cannot discriminate efficient units and therefore unable to give a complete ranking of DMUs. This study aimed to overcome the ranking problem found in standard DEA by integrating DEA and Preference Ranking Organization Method for Enrichment Evaluations (PROMETHEE) II. The hybrid method was applied to evaluate the efficiency and ranking of 22 life insurance and takaful companies in Malaysia from the period of 2017 to 2018. Input variables used in this study comprised of fees and commission, and management expenses. Meanwhile, output variables were net premium and generated investment income. The proposed method involved two stages. In the first stage, DEA was applied to obtain the efficient scores for the DMUs. In the second stage, PROMETHEE II was implemented to rank the efficient units. This hybrid method has successfully obtained full ranking of all the insurance companies under study. The inefficient companies can learn strategies and practices from efficient companies to enhance their services. It is recommended for future research to integrate DEA with other Multi Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) methods such as TOPSIS and VIKOR to fully rank the DMUs.