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International Monetary Fund. Monetary and Capital Markets Department
This Detailed Assessment of Observance on Insurance Core Principles on Thailand discusses that the government of Thailand has made a concerted effort to develop the insurance sector. The government has implemented a series of insurance development plans toward this end. Some significant regulatory and supervisory challenges remain, however, if Thailand is to continue to meet the pressures of a changing market and to continue to build the trust on which future growth depends. Consideration should be given to vesting more supervisory authority for key supervisory decisions with the Commission rather than with the Minister and Cabinet. Vesting authority with the Commission will help to ensure that the insurance supervisor has adequate powers to meet the objectives of insurance supervision. With respect to winding up and exit from the market, the insurance legislation should be amended to clearly establish a point at which it is no longer permissible for a troubled insurer to continue in business.
International Monetary Fund. Monetary and Capital Markets Department
This Insurance Core Principles Detailed Assessment Report was prepared in the context of the Financial Sector Assessment Program for the People’s Republic of China–Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR). The report describes that the insurance penetration and density in HKSAR is among the top 10 in the world. Foreign-owned insurers are dominant in the HKSAR insurance sector, and account for about 72 percent of total assets as at end-2012. The long-term insurance industry is highly concentrated, while the market share of general insurance industry is more evenly distributed. All except one of the top-10 insurance groups are all foreign owned, with much larger consolidated operations compared to their operations in HKSAR. The Insurance Authority is responsible for regulating and supervising the insurance industry of the HKSAR. It is supported by the Office of the Commissioner of Insurance, a government department in the HKSAR. A self-regulatory system is used to supervise the conduct of business of intermediaries.
International Monetary Fund
Member countries are routinely faced with a range of shocks that can contribute to higher volatility in aggregate output and, in extreme cases, to economic crises. The presence of such risks underlies a potential demand for mechanisms to soften the blow from adverse economic shocks -- “country insurance” for short. Protective measures that countries can take themselves (“self-insurance”) include sound economic policies, robust financial structures, and adequate reserve coverage. Beyond self insurance, countries have also established regional arrangements that pool risks, while at the multilateral level the IMF has a central role in making its resources temporarily available to attenuate the costs of economic adjustment when shocks create balance of payments difficulties for a member. This paper analyzes a number of mechanisms through which countries can self-insure, leaving the role of collective regional and multilateral arrangements to subsequent papers.
Ms. Janet Kong
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Mr. Manmohan Singh
This paper focuses on asset allocation decisions of life insurance companies in emerging markets. Mature market insurers allocate only a small fraction of their assets to emerging markets because of regulatory constraints, rating pressures, and currency risk. However, global insurers invest directly in emerging markets by setting up subsidiaries rather than through portfolio investment, and this trend is increasing. Local insurers largely remain captive investors of local instruments and provide stability to the domestic securities market. The regulatory regime and the liquidity and depth of local markets play an important role in asset allocation decisions of insurers. Insurance companies are increasingly adopting asset liability management and risk control measures. However, insufficiently developed local markets and regulatory interventions on the liabilities side often limit optimal asset allocation.
Mr. Jaewoo Lee
A quantitative framework is developed to bring forward the insurance motive of holding international reserves. The insurance value of reserves is quantified as the market price of an equivalent option that provides the same insurance coverage as the reserves. This quantitative framework is applied to calculating the cost of a regional insurance arrangement (e.g., an Asian Monetary Fund) and to analyzing one leg of an optimal reserve-holding decision.