Board Composition and Insurance Firm Performance: Evidence from Emerging Markets

This study aims to investigate how corporate governance impacts the performance of insurance companies in two emerging markets: Malaysia and Bangladesh. We employ the Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) based panel regression on the annual data from 54 insurance companies over 2012 and 2016. The findings of the study show that governance mechanism has a significant impact on the performance of the insurance companies under review. Increase of independent members of the board has a negative influence on the financial performance of Malaysian insurance companies while such relationship is not statistically significant for insurance companies in Bangladesh. Additionally, findings suggest that board size has a significant positive impact on the financial performance of the insurance companies. Finally, the study provides new evidence on agency relationship for insurance firms in emerging markets and contributes to the literature by addressing the fact that the increased involvement of non-executive members on the board of insurance companies might lead to poor financial performance. Findings of this study can provide guidance to regulators in designing governance mechanism that caters for insurance firms.