Abstract
We examine the challenges that Swedish life insurers faced in managing the lapse risk of policies written on the lives of the industrial urban working-class between 1915 and 1947. We observe that with the threat of State socialization of insurance in the 1930s, industrial life insurers modified their business practices to better control policy lapses. Using firm-level data, we also analyze the effect of socio-economic changes, such as rising real wages, interest rate fluctuations and unemployment on life insurance policy lapses. Our results support contemporary tests of the emergency fund and interest rate explanations for the voluntary premature termination of life insurance policies.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 222-239 |
| Number of pages | 18 |
| Journal | Business History |
| Volume | 62 |
| Issue number | 2 |
| Early online date | 22 Feb 2018 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 17 Feb 2020 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2018, © 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
Access to Document
- BH Final Manuscript2 (October 2017) (002)
This is a post-peer-review, pre-copy edited version of an article published in Business History. The definitive publisher-authenticated version Mike Adams, Lars-Fredrik Andersson, Magnus Lindmark, Liselotte Eriksson & Elena Veprauskaite (2018) Managing policy lapse risk in Sweden’s life insurance market between 1915 and 1947, Business History, is available online at: https://doi.org/10.1080/00076791.2017.1418331.
