Centro de Documentacion de Fundación MAPFRE - Suspension of insurers' dividends as a response to the COVID-19 crisis : evidence from the European insurance equity market

Notes: Sumario: The recent COVID-19 outbreak and significant increase in resulting global uncertainty poses many challenges to financial sectors. Many regulators took measures to safeguard the resilience of financial institutions by requesting postponements of dividend distributions until uncertainties about further development diminished. Specifically, on 2 April 2020, the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority issued a statement requesting that re/insurers suspend all discretionary dividend distributions and share buybacks aimed at remunerating shareholders. Although the goal was to strengthen the overall financial stability of the sector, it may have negatively influenced insurers' equity prices in the short term. Hence, this paper empirically investigates this potential effect using an event study methodology. Although negative drops were observed in some cases, the obtained empirical results suggest that they were not statistically significant for the European insurers' equity market when considering the event windows covering several days after the statement was published.

Related records: En: Geneva papers on risk and insurance : issues and practice. - Geneva : The Geneva Association, 1976- = ISSN 1018-5895. - 10/10/2022 Volumen 47 Número 4 - octubre 2022 , p. 785-816Materia / lugar / evento: Mercado de seguros COVID-19 Europa Other categories: 219

Rights: In Copyright (InC)

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