Determinants of Financial Performance of General Insurance Companies in Kenya

Abstract

This paper strived to observe impact of various determinants on financial performance of general insurers operating in Kenya. Return on asset ratio of different companies represented financial performance. Populace was 37 general insurers operating in Kenya. A nine-year timeframe of data was analyzed for the study; that is the year 2013 all the way to the year 2021 inclusive. The survey employed descriptive design. The data used was sourced from supervisory annual reports issued by the Insurance Regulatory Authority of Kenya for the different time periods. The information collected was then analysed in SPSS by using the model on multiple linear regression. The analysis performed gave a result that 60.1 percent change in general insurance firms’ performance is explainable by the five predictors of the study. The remaining 39.9% movements in the financial performance is explainable by other predictors. The survey did find a weak link around some selected predictors to asset return of the general insurance firms. The outcome concludes that premium retention has an inverse and inconsequential effect on performance. In addition to this, solvency margin and performance is inversely and inconsequentially linked. The outcome of the study further show that the leverage ratio possesses an inverse impact on ROA. A further result was obtained with respect to underwriting risk. It was observed that underwritings risks show inverse effects on ROA. The survey observed that the size of a firm and performance are directly linked. Survey recommends need of additional consideration to roles played by reinsurers in general insurance in Kenya. This is in regard to the levels of premium retention ratios to be maintained by general insurers. When a firm’s premium retention ratios is high, the result would be a worse off financial performance. The insurance regulatory authority (IRA) needs to observe the levels of the solvency margin of the general insurers. This is done for various reasons, however, the regulator doesn’t have to require the threshold to be too high unnecessarily as the study found solvency margin does not possess substantial influences on financial performance.