Analysis of the Brazilian insurance market: a view of insurance companies' organizational performance in 2003

Abstract

Organizational performance analysis is always a source of great discussion. Questions on which indicators to use and how to consolidate them so as to establish a fair performance assessment criterion are present in several studies and in companies' daily reality. In this sense, this paper presents a modeling proposal for this problem through the use of the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). The goal is to find a relative performance ratio that is capable of conjugating financial profitability and risk indicators in organizational performance analysis. In other words, each company's ratio is an integrated combination of several performance vectors and a function not only of its own performance, but also of the performance of other analyzed companies. Insurance companies from four segments were part of the research sample: 25 auto, 10 health, 13 life and retirement and 18 of numerous coverage, which were operating in Brazil in 2003, listed in the Gazeta Mercatil - Balanço Financeiro Magazine ranking (2004) about the performance of the best insurance companies and other financial institutions.

Insurance Companies; Organizational Performance; DEA; Multicriterial Analysis; Benchmarking