Efficiency and Scale Properties of Indian General Insurers—A DEA Approach

The current research applies a multi-stage approach for measuring and explaining the efficiency performance of 20 general insurers operating in India for the phase 2012–2013 to 2019–2020. In the first stage, the study adopts non-parametric radial data envelopment analysis (DEA) for point and interval estimation of firm-specific efficiency, scale efficiency, returns to scale (RTS) and scale elasticity. The second stage of the study applies panel data regression for regressing technical and scale efficiency scores on the index of market concentration, insurer age, return on shareholders’ capital and the solvency indicator. The outcome of the next stage indicates that the index of market concentration and insurer age are the two contextual variables which are statistically significant, although their impacts on technical and scale efficiency are negative. The influence of the solvency ratio is significant for scale efficiency only. JEL Classifications: C-23, C-61, D-22, G-22