Analysis of community‐owned mutual insurers' prospects of development in CEE countries: Outlining research agenda

Abstract

The aim of the article is to discuss the development of prospects of mutual insurers in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) countries and outline a possible research agenda for understanding their development direction in these countries. This has been achieved by exploring and identifying reasons behind community‐owned mutual insurers' underdevelopment and potential for future development through analysis of 24 interviews that included representatives from three stakeholder groups: supervisory authorities, insurance industry associations, and academics. Respondents were located in eight CEE countries: the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, the Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Croatia, and Romania. Results of the study explaining mutual insurers' current underdevelopment and the potential for future development form four categories: citizens as consumers; mutual insurer's organizational characteristics and management; the impact of regulation; and society at large. Based on the results, in the article, we envision and point out several research approaches, perspectives of development, and directions that should be considered further by the scholars in the future.

“Swimming Against the Current” of Demutualizations in the 1990s and 2000s: The Case of the Private Statutory Pension Insurance Sector in Finland

“…6 cf. Krišto, J., Talonen, A., & Paukovic ´, H. (2021). Analysis of community-owned mutual insurers' prospects of development in CEE countries: Outlining research agenda.…”

Insurance research in Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe: What we can learn from XPRIMM data

“…As CESEE countries continue to develop, it is increasingly important that we understand accompanying changes in insurance markets. Researchers have taken up the mantel, examining insurance practices in Bosnia and Herzegovina (Kozarevic & Hodzic, 2021), North Macedonia (Blazheska & Ivanovski, 2021;Stojkoski et al, 2021), Romania (Mare, Dragoș, & Dragotă, et al, 2019;Mare, Dragoș, Dragotă, & Dragoș, 2019), Ukraine (Kniazieva et al, 2021), the Visegrád Four countries (Brokešová & Vachálková, 2016) and the CESEE region generally (Beckmann et al, 2013;Born & Bujakowski, 2022;Kjosevski, 2012;Krišto et al, 2021;Njegomir & Stojić, 2012;Petkovski & Jordan, 2014;Poposki et al, 2015;Pye, 2005;Srbinoski et al, 2021;Tipurić et al, 2008). 3 Despite growing interest in the region, research into CESEE insurance markets has been severely limited by a lack of insurer-level data.…”

“…Studies that employ firm‐level data tend to be descriptive in nature, reporting on market composition in particular countries (see, e.g., Sicoe‐Murg et al, 2021). To date, we know of only two studies that analyze data from CESEE insurers, those by Krišto et al (2021) and Srbinoski et al (2021). The authors do not draw on publicly available data repositories, but rather construct unique, propriety data sets by soliciting firm‐specific information from regulatory bodies (Srbinoski et al, 2021) and insurance federations (Krišto et al, 2021).…”