Corporate Governance–Performance Nexus in Indian Insurance Companies: A Sectoral Assessment of Life vs. Non-Life sector

Corporate governance is one of the key sustainability indicators to manage and control the business functions ethically and transparently. This mechanism is essential in every sector, specifically in the insurance landscape, to strategically meet uncertain risk & losses and the interest of policyholders. This study examines the corporate governance practices followed by the life and non-life insurance industry in India and its effect on the financial performance of insurers. To provide empirical results of the study, we considered corporate governance as independent variables, financial performance as dependent variables, and control variables for validation and reliability of the results. Secondary data was collected from a sample of ten insurance companies, including five life and five non-life insurers, for 10 years from 2014 to 2023, and implied descriptive statistics, t-tests, and regression models were used for analysis purposes. The result reveals that across the life and non-life insurers, unified governance mechanisms are followed, but it substantially influences the financial performance of life insurance more significantly than the non-life insurance sector. The reasons behind that are that life insurance premiums are held for a long period of time and also certainty to assure claim settlement in the form of death or maturity. So, the life insurance industry requires formulating more stringent governance mechanisms that sustainably address unstable operations and performance landscapes. The outcome of this study would structure robust governance norms, which would eventually enhance Indian insurers’ performance sustainably and discover the insight contributions of this field of research in an emerging economy scenario.