RELATIVE EFFICIENCY OF INDUSTRY INSURANCE IN EUROPE: DATA ENVELOPMENT ANALYSIS APPROACH

Insurance industry today is one of the catalysts of economic growth. However, there exists a feedback relationship between economic development and insurance industry. That is why measuring the efficiency of insurance industry is becoming more and more popular in the last 15 years. This paper analyses the efficiency of 29 European countries for the period from 2004 to 2013. The purpose is to evaluate good and bad practices and to form guidelines for efficiency improvements. Window analysis within Data Envelopment Analysis methodology enables us to evaluate efficiency in dynamic surroundings. The results indicate that there exist significant differences between efficient and inefficient
countries. They also give insights into possible improvements of insurance industries in observed countries.