Issue #1 (Volume 13 2022)

The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between enterprise risk management (ERM) and company ethics, so as to understand the central role of risk management in improving company ethics. A 5-point Likert scale questionnaire was used to survey all 122 employees of an insurance organization. The level of ethics was measured by posing questions on the integrity, trustworthiness, and level of respect for top management, middle management, and non-management. The overall Cronbach’s alpha for the instrument measuring the level of ethics was 0.865, indicating that the instrument was highly reliable.
The relationship between ERM controls and the level of ethics was determined using regression analysis, which produced a F value of 0.268 (p-value 0.607), which implied that there is no relationship between ERM controls and the level of ethics. It was also ascertained that ethics and compliance-related issues are not fully embraced by the organization. This implied that the insurance company is at a level of “nominal” risk management with uncoordinated, top-down risk management activities.
Since ethics risk exposure resulting from poor corporate governance has been identified by the Institute of Risk Management as being a key contributor to many business failures in South Africa (and internationally), the exploratory findings can stimulate the leadership to institute polices to mitigate poor governance and risk as this will benefit all stakeholders.

Financial soundness of insurance firms within a country tends to heavily affect its financial environment. This study will further assess the relationship between both factors with the support of a special model to test the financial soundness of insurance companies. The model could be utilized as an indicator of the stabilization of a country’s financial environment; this is done by testing the insurance companies’ falls. The methodology used was discriminant regression on the Amman Stock Exchange (ASE) to test 12 indicators that were derived from six CARMEL model parameters. The six tested parameters were: capital adequacy, asset quality, reinsurance and actuarial issues, management efficiency, earnings and profitability, and liquidity. The results have shown that 10 out of 12 indicators are significant factors. Additionally, the study proved that the CARMEL model is an applicable model to test the financial soundness of ASE insurance companies, the possibility of detecting a deviation between the actual and expected performance was barely minimum. The effect of deviation was present in eight firms out of 19, three of which were affected by the type II error (riskier deviation). The study concluded that the CARMEL model is a significant model, and the insurance firms that follow the Jordan Insurance Federation (JIF) requirements are financially sound.

The functioning of the insurance system is associated with the dynamics of development and the current state of the economy, the political and social situation in a country, the legal field of operation of both insurance companies and economic agents. That is why the effective development of the insurance system is impossible without a deep understanding of the factors of the macroeconomic environment that can determine the scale of insurance activity. The aim of the study is to identify and determine the impact of macroeconomic factors on the development of the insurance system in Ukraine. To analyze the exogenous factors influencing the development of the insurance system, the study uses the method of PESTL analysis, as a result of which the strength of the influence of factors was assessed by insurance experts through a questionnaire. It is determined that political factors play an important role in the development of the insurance system. It is proved that economic factors influencing the insurance system have a direct impact, since the decline in production, rising inflation, which is reflected in the reduction of purchasing power of the population, leads to a reduction in insurance premiums to insurance companies. Social factors influencing the development of the insurance system manifest themselves through trust in insurers, which is the catalyst for the development of the insurance system. Technological factors influencing the development of the insurance system are represented by the level of development of innovations and technologies in insurance, the level of penetration of the Internet and mobile gadgets into the insurance system, the degree of globalization and openness of the insurance system. It is determined that legal factors are inhibitors of the development of the insurance system, as they do not create appropriate conditions for its improvement and development. It is concluded that economic factors have the greatest impact on the development of the insurance system and the functioning of its elements.

Acknowledgments
The authors with to thank V. S. Krupka, Certified consultant of IC “OVB Alfinance Ukraine”, ; V. O. Plyuta, Director of Khmelnytskyj Branch of IC “Providna”, Head of the Center for Reception and Customer Service in Khmelnytskyj, ; and V. V. Kulchytskyi-Polyvko, Deputy Director of the Center for Corporate Sales Development in the Western Region of IC “Unika”, .

The factors of the insurance industry’s business performance are of concern to a variety of participants in any economy, such as the government, politicians, policyholders, and speculators. There has been very little research on this issue in Sub-Saharan Africa, with the majority focusing on specific factors that influence the performance of insurance businesses. The purpose of this paper was to evaluate the influence of leverage and liquidity on financial performance of general insurance companies in Sub-Saharan Africa. The study used descriptive correlational techniques to obtain panel data across 113 general insurers operating in Sub-Saharan Africa as of December 31, 2019, for 11 years (2008–2019). The pooled OLS, fixed effects and random effects models were estimated with the financial performance measures (proxied by ROA) as the dependent variables where the Hausman test was employed to test the hypothesis. The study found that there is a negative negligible link between leverage and financial performance, whereas there is a positive association between liquidity and financial performance. The study suggested that proper liquidity management is critical for insurance businesses to enhance a company’s value as well as financial success. The focus should be on establishing a proper asset-liability mix, in which a company’s total liabilities do not exceed its total assets. Furthermore, organizations require cash flow policy recommendations to optimize profit potential while limiting liquidity risk in the financial statement.

The Ukrainian market of insurance services is at the stage of formation and development in the absence of a clearly defined model for further functioning. The purpose of the paper is to analyze the trends in the functioning of the Ukrainian insurance services market in the period of 2010–2021.
The results of the study reveal the general trends in the functioning of the Ukrainian insurance services market in terms of transformational features of the market composition (a significant reduction in the number of insurers – by 2.5 times), concluded insurance contracts (a significant increase by 3.5 times), market concentration (moderately concentrated), the level of insurance penetration (the average value was 1.64%).
Considerable attention is paid to the interpretation of the main indicators of market activity and their dynamics, in particular, in terms of insurance premiums and payments (the level of insurance payments was 32.2%), assets of insurers (increase by 1.5 times), formed insurance reserves (a noticeable increase by 3 times), digital transformation (in terms of internetization, individualization, digitalization).
The study made it possible to form promising vectors for the development of the Ukrainian insurance services market based on the model of social responsibility of participants in the insurance process with clear digitalization outlines and the formation of insurance relations based on innovative approaches.

Acknowledgment
This study was supported by the Ministry of education, science, research and sport of the Slovak Republic [grant VEGA 1/0689/20 Digital economy and changes in the education system to reflect labour market demands].

The claim settlement process is one of the most critical aspects of health insurance. Many policyholder grievances often surface during claim settlement, which will likely shape the insurer’s reputation. Hence, this study aims to evaluate the relationships between hypothesized factors concerning the third-party administrator’s claim settlement process as perceived by policyholders. The paper used the data of policyholders from Delhi/NCR, India, who have availed the cashless claims in the last three years. In the process, a total of 790 questionnaires were sought to be. The methodology used was the extractive factor analysis comprising the KMO test, reliability assessment with Cronbach’s Alpha, and correlation assessment. The study attempted to evaluate all the contributing factors that shape the third-party administrator’s behavior during the claim settlement. Therefore, different factors were identified (themes A, B, C, and D). The study reported a significant relationship between insurance company perceptions (0.162), network hospital perceptions (0.182), product design (0.180), insurance agent (0.332), communications (0.114), disclosure (0.122), internal practices (0.143), and TPA claim settlement prospects across the Indian perspective. The contextual impacts on individual and group decision-making must be monitored and accommodated across effective public policy management concerning settlement of health insurance claims. The study findings could help insurers create business models leading to better customer satisfaction and congruence between agents, policyholders, TPAs, and health insurance companies.

The principle of utmost good faith has been recognized as one of the essential principles in insurance, and its practice in other countries has been fairly applied to both parties. It is suspected that this insurance principle in regulation and its implementation in Indonesia only burdens one unilateral. Therefore, this study aims to prove the allegation that the principle of utmost good faith favors only the insurer and its application in dispute resolution directed at harming the insured party. This study uses a case study approach, with five insurance legal cases in the form of court decisions as purposively selected objects. Qualitative analysis (content analysis) was then carried out to obtain data: data codification, data presentation, and conclusions/verification. The principle of utmost good faith is regulated by the following documents of Indonesian insurance law: Indonesian Commercial Law Code, Act No.7/1992 and Act No.40/2014. The results showed that the utmost good faith principle in several Indonesian insurance regulations is more in favor of insurance companies. The insurance company always utilizes Article 251 of the Indonesian Commercial Law Code or the utmost good faith principle as a shield to commit fraud, and refuses to fulfill its legal liability with the aim of harming the insured.

Acknowledgments
We thank to the Ministry of Education, Culture, Research and Technology of the Republic of Indonesia for supporting and funding this research until it was completed on time.

The sharia insurance industry has experienced significant development from year to year. A sharia insurance company’s efficiency is crucial because it reflects its capacity to generate outputs from resources. This study aims to enhance comprehension of the efficiency of sharia insurance currently studied by doing a comprehensive literature study. This study selected 429 published articles about Islamic insurance indexed by Scopus between 2010 and 2022. 32 final articles that met the criteria that discussed efficiency as the primary study included in the qualitative synthesis analysis were selected. As a result, this study succeeded in revealing the development of sharia insurance efficiency studies based on the number of publications, authors, countries, subject areas, sources of publications, and cited articles. The study found four main methods researchers used to measure the efficiency of Sharia insurance. This study also revealed several studies comparing the efficiency level between conventional and sharia insurance. Furthermore, the study’s results were mapped based on the significance of the influence of variables on the efficiency of Sharia insurance. This study offers a new opportunity for further development in methods and variables of the efficiency of sharia insurance.

The study aimed to examine the significance of perceived trust dimensions in explaining insurance inclusion in Uganda. Insurance inclusion remained very low in Uganda. Although trust is vital for insurance inclusion, it is not known whether all of its dimensions are relevant for insurance inclusion. As such, hierarchical regression analysis was adopted to investigate the predictive power of the individual dimensions of perceived trust on insurance inclusion. The significance of the individual components was attained by determining the change in the adjusted R2 and the significance of the change. Hence, the results showed that integrity (β = 0.316, p < 0.01), credibility (β = 0.252, p < 0.01) and reliability (β = 0.211, p < 0.01) were significant positive predictors of insurance inclusion. However, the results showed benevolence (β = 0.018, p > 0.05) to have an insignificant positive influence on insurance inclusion in Uganda. The effect of benevolence on insurance inclusion was practically and statistically insignificant. Overall results showed that independent variables explained 50.6% of the variance in insurance inclusion in Uganda when combined. Unlike prior studies that have investigated the general effect of trust as the global variable, the current study examined the impact of the independent dimensions of trust in explaining insurance inclusion. Besides, earlier studies ignored the trust theory, which provides key dimensions for understanding trust. The current study reveals that not all dimensions of perceived trust are significant for insurance inclusion in Uganda.