Time gap of the impact of risk insurance, life insurance and reinsurance on social progress: The case of Ukraine

The article analyzes the regulatory framework in the insurance market in connection with the advent of Big Data, such as information collected from different sources that can be manipulated by new technologies. The use of Big Data offers significant opportunities to the insurance companies in terms of digitization of the distribution channels and greater knowledge of the customers, which is instrumental to a more effective identification of the individual’s risk profile, as well as improvement of the competitiveness. However, regulatory measures are needed for a proper use of Big Data in terms of respect of the individual privacy, potential discrimination and constraint on competition.

Financial imbalance is the reason of a macroeconomic instability. This study aims at identifying the institutional causes of financial markets imbalance. The authors consider that financial intermediaries in Ukraine work in a speculative market segment carrying out high-risk transactions with the purpose of earning a huge profit. In fact, in Ukraine the role of these institutions in the investment process financing is insignificant. The authors show that soundness of banks along with the ease of access to loans and a low level of confidence in national banking system are the main reasons of instability in financial market in Ukraine. Due to scarcity of financial capacity and refusal to carry out transactions in a high-risk market segments, insurance companies are unable to entirely perform functions of risk redistribution. Competitiveness of Ukrainian financial market remains low with a limited financial services nomenclature and it may be considered to be attractive for potential foreign investors.

The main purpose of this investigation is to distinguish the problematic tendencies of the health insurance market development in Ukraine and the competitive positions of the leading insurance companies on it. Accordingly, the issues of complex analysis of key indicators of the insurers’ competitiveness, and the issues of establishing the factors that determine the level of competition in the market become very urgent. The first 30 insurers out of 50 were taken for the study, and they received about 90% of insurance premiums for voluntary health insurance in Ukraine in 2017. The authors have made the assessment of the competitive environment of the health insurance market of Ukraine using the concentration index and the indicator of market competition, which resulted in defining the advantages and disadvantages of their application. Taking into account that the abovementioned indicators for assessing the competition in the insurance market can provide only approximate results, which indicates the inadequacy of the conclusions about the effectiveness of business processes management on it, the authors offered a scientific methodological approach to assessing the market environment with the use of an integrated indicator of the voluntary health insurance market competitiveness. Herewith, such an integrated indicator is calculated in terms of three segments of the market: sickness insurance; voluntary medical insurance (continuous health insurance); medical expenses insurance, simultaneously taking into account the behavior of two indicators – concentration and market competition. As a result of the research, it was found that the highest level of market concentration is typical for sickness insurance and it indicates a high monopoly in the market in terms of this segment. Thus, the integrated indicator allows to make a comprehensive investigation of market behavior of the market participants and to reveal the problematic tendencies of its competitive environment.