Centro de Documentación de Fundación MAPFRE - The Quality of insurance intermediary services : empirical evidence for Germany

MAP20100068052

The Quality of insurance intermediary services : empirical evidence for Germany / Martina Eckardt, Solvig Räthke-Döppner

Sumario: Competing insurance intermediaries provide heterogeneous services that are difficult for incompletely informed consumers to assess. Transaction cost economics, search theory, and principal-agent theory provide arguments on product quality differences between exclusive agents and independent intermediaries. This article uses a sample of 927 insurance intermediaries in Germany. By performing OLS estimations, we test the impact of the different distribution channels and other factors on intermediaries service quality. Depending on the proxies used for service quality, we find mixed evidence for the product quality hypothesis. Service quality depends to a large extenton the information-gathering and processing activities of the individualintermediaries, independent of the respective distribution channel

En: The Journal of risk and insurance. - Nueva York : The American Risk and Insurance Association, 1964- = ISSN 0022-4367. - 01/09/2010 Tomo 77 Número 3 - 2010 , p. 667-701

1. Mediación de seguros . 2. Canales de distribución . 3. Ventas de seguros . 4. Intermediarios . 5. Administración de la empresa de seguros . 6. Alemania . I. Räthke-Döppner, Solvig . II. Título.