Efficiency in the UK life insurance industry: Mutual firms versus proprietary firms

Abstract

The paper discusses the main tenets of stakeholder theory and agency theory and goes on to analyse the relative performance of a sample of 100 mutual and proprietary life insurance companies in the UK during the period 1992–1996. The paper concludes that there is weak evidence to support the contention that mutual life insurers are relatively more cost efficient than proprietary insurers. Mutual companies in the sample perform well relative to proprietary companies in terms of annual surpluses and expenses ratios. There is also evidence that fund managers in mutual companies perform at least as well on average as those in proprietary companies.