Factors affecting insurance premiums: An application on the selected OECD countries

An important contribution of the insurance sector to the national economy is understood when the share of the insurance sector in the financial market is examined. The share and effectiveness of insurance premiums in the OECD countries, which are the economic indicators of the insurance sector, differ according to the level of development of the countries.The main purpose of the study is to determine the factors affecting the insurance premiums. For this purpose, factors affecting insurance premiums were investigated by using panel data method by using data of 1983-2016 period and 17 OECD countries. Studies in the literature mainly focus on the production of life insurance premium and non-life insurance premium production. However, studies on total insurance premium production remained limited and the total insurance premium production data were used in this study. As a result of the study, only the growth variable of the variables included in the analysis has a statistically significant effect only on the life branch premium. Another finding is that there is a positive but statistically meaningless effect between growth, interest rate, exchange rate, inflation variables and non-life insurance premium and total insurance premium. The findings of this study support the other studies in the literature.