The insurance industry growth within the European Union : a panel analysis

Abstract

The rationale behind this study is for the researcher to attain better knowledge on how the European insurance industry has progressed over time, especially in terms of financial growth. Furthermore, this study aims to analyse what the major contributors to the industry’s evolution were. Consequently, the researcher will also try to discover how these factors contributed in shaping today’s insurance industry. In the Introduction, the motivation behind this study is outlined. Mainly, it is noted that when compared to the banking industry and the capital markets, research about the insurance industry’s growth is relatively neglected. Moving to the Literature Review, the researcher examined the limited number of scholarly literature available with regards to insurance growth across EU countries. The researcher also focuses on the chosen insurance determinants so as to see how these have affected or may affect the insurance industry. Afterwards, the researcher focuses on the Methodology. In this chapter, the researcher starts by defining the key variables which would be used in the panel analysis and justifies their relevance to the study. Moreover, he explains the different methods of how the panel analysis would be run and finally, he outlines the considerations which were undertaken whilst gathering the secondary data. The researcher also summarised the methodological limitations that he encountered. In the fourth chapter, the researcher presents the Analysis, Results and Discussion. The main focus was for the researcher to analyse the variables, present the results and discuss these in view of the literature examined in Chapter 2. Finally, the researcher provides the Conclusions and Recommendations. In this chapter, he summarises the results obtained in the previous chapter and also comments on whether the research question had been answered. Finally, the researcher presented the implications he encountered throughout his studies and also provided recommendations for future studies.