Issue #2 (Volume 15 2024)

Despite the government’s financial support and promotion by the regulator, the agriculture insurance market is still in the nascent stage in Nepal. The paper aims to examine how awareness level and risk management perception affect the farmers’ satisfaction, taking non-financial satisfaction as a mediating factor. The study was conducted in two metropolitan cities, Pokhara and Bharatpur, in Nepal. Cluster and purposive sampling design was applied to select the respondents. Opinions were obtained through the structured questionnaire from 400 farmers with experience in agriculture insurance. The survey instrument had two parts. The first part was related to demographic information, while the second part measured attitude to risk management, clients’ awareness of insurance, financial satisfaction, and non-financial satisfaction. Almost three forth of the respondents (74.75%) were males and more than half (52%) possessed more than 8 ropani of land. Descriptive statistics, inferential statistics, exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modelling were used to arrive at conclusions. The results revealed that respondents’ awareness toward agriculture insurance is the most agreed construct (mean = 4.35), followed by financial satisfaction (mean = 3.88), non-financial satisfaction (mean = 3.70), and risk management attitude (mean = 3.5). Although the results did not confirm the mediating effect of non-financial satisfaction on financial contentment and awareness level, a partial mediation effect exists between risk management attitude and financial satisfaction. Financial serenity and non-financial gratification have the strongest association. This study suggests executives and regulators expand risk management capacity and awareness initiatives to increase client satisfaction and loyalty to crop insurance.

Acknowledgment
The University Grants Commission, Nepal, is acknowledged for the financial support to conduct the study under the FRG MGMT 4-2019/20. The support of MBA students Mr. Dhan Bahadur Jagari and Lalit Bahadur Shahi is highly appreciated for their fieldwork as enumerators.

The escalating wartime risks in Ukraine has led to a rapid reduction in insurance coverage in life and non-life segments. The purpose of the study is to rank Ukraine’s insurance companies based on an adaptation of the DEA method to the insurance market conditions. The study utilized the Supervisory Statistics of the National Bank of Ukraine as data. The study also used ranking of insurance companies based on technical efficiency criteria. The output indicators include the profitability of total capital (Output1) and the occupied share of the insurance market (Output2). The input indicators comprise the volume of total assets of insurers (Input1), the share of equity capital in assets (Input2), the level of gross payments (Input3), and the level of payments to insurance reserves (Input4). The ranking of insurance companies is based on minimizing the distance of each from the bounds of technical efficiency by solving a set of optimization problems. Based on the modeling results, a list of market leaders (7 companies) was formed for the end of the third quarter of 2023. They served nearly 37% of the insurance market in Ukraine, accumulating 41.5% of the total assets of this financial market sector. So, the primary issue for insurance companies is the loss of solvency due to the absence of adequate levels of insurance reserves. Therefore, priority measures should include strengthening regulatory constraints in this financial market segment to facilitate its qualitative renewal.

This paper explores the asymmetric effects of life and non-life insurance on economic growth in Saudi Arabia. Quarterly data on insurance penetration rates and GDP growth from 2009 to 2022, obtained from the Global Economy, Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority, and World Bank databases, are utilized. A nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag (NARDL) model is employed to examine the relationships between insurance and growth. The results reveal a significant and asymmetric relationship between life insurance penetration and GDP growth. Specifically, a 1% increase in life insurance penetration is associated with a 0.3% increase in GDP growth in the long run, while a 1% decrease shows no significant effect. For non-life insurance, both increases and decreases demonstrate significant but asymmetric impacts on growth. A 1% increase in non-life insurance penetration corresponds to a 0.2% increase in GDP growth, whereas a 1% decrease is linked to a 0.15% decrease in GDP growth. These findings support the ‘supply-leading’ hypothesis, suggesting that the insurance sector can play a leading role in promoting economic growth. The results provide new quantitative insights into the relationship between insurance and economic growth in Saudi Arabia, offering valuable implications for policymakers. It is suggested that the insurance industry can be leveraged to foster economic growth by promoting life insurance and managing the asymmetric impacts of non-life insurance.