3.1. Sample and Variables
S&P Global Trucost provides environmental data for worldwide companies classified by industries and geographies. We consult the “Environmental Register” of Trucost to obtain environmental data on insurance companies (Property and Casualty and Life and Health) from all geographies, i.e. Africa, Asia-Pacific, Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, Middle East, United States and Canada. In particular, we download so-called environmental “impact ratios". For each company, this number is the ratio between estimated environmental “damage costs" and total revenues. “Damage costs" quantify, in monetary terms, the negative externality associated with the use of a natural resource (water, minerals, metals, natural gas, oil, coal, forestry, and agriculture), the emission of a pollutant, or the generation of greenhouse gas or waste. Impact ratios include both direct damage costs, i.e. environmental costs due to a company’s direct operations, and also indirect damage costs, i.e. costs arising inside the company’s supply chain. For the assessment of environmental damages, Trucost uses mainly annually updated information disclosed by the company itself. Damage costs are computed by multiplying the company’s natural resources used or pollutants emitted (e.g. m3 of water or tCO2e) by environmental valuation coefficients. Valuation coefficients are factors that represent the average damage value, i.e., the external cost of damage to human, natural and built capital, resulting from an organization’s direct and indirect use of natural resources or the emission of pollutants. In lack of company’s disclosure, Trucost uses an econometrics environmental input‒output model (EEIO) that approximates the damage originating from the company’s operations as well as its supply chain tiers. More information on Trucost can be found at
https://www.spglobal.com/esg/trucost, while the outline about the methodology implemented for the collection of environmental data can be found at
https://portal.s1.spglobal.com/survey/documents/SPG_S1_Trucost_Environmental_Data_Methodology.pdf. In the
Appendix 5 we report an example of the environmental data classification provided by S&P Capital Trucost. We display items for a Property and Casualty insurer (State Farm Insurance) as well as a Life and Health insurer (MetLife).
We have in the sample a total of 1,866 insurer-year observations.
Table 1 displays the sample composition across geographies and insurance segments. We have a larger number of Property and Casualty insurers, mainly located in the United States and Canada, Asia-Pacific, and Europe. The Life and Health insurers in the sample, instead, are concentrated in Asia-Pacific, followed by United States and Canada, and Europe.
For each company, the environmental impact ratio is denoted with , and divides the total environmental damage costs by the total revenues of the company. Thus, represents potential costs if the insurer would be held responsible for its environmental damages. Our goal is to test whether environmental impacts measured by are associated with the level of insurance reserves. To measure reserves, we use the following variables. is the natural logarithm of total insurance reserves and liabilities for insurance and investment contracts (in dollar terms). are total policy reserves as a multiple of GAAP equity, while are reserves for insurance and investment contracts as a percent of total assets.
Moreover, we verify the effect from
on leverage, profitability, and equity value. Our measure for leverage (
) is the ratio of gross premiums to policholder surplus [
16,
17,
18,
19]. We also tested models using the ratio of net premiums written to surplus, but results changed very marginally. For this reason, we let them available upon request. This ratio measures the efficiency with which the insurer uses its capital resources to generate business. An insurers with a relatively low
is not fully utilizing its capital, and it has more room for growth, i.e. has higher capacity to underwrite new policies. In contrast, a high
indicates a more aggressive underwriting and greater risk. For insurers with high leverage, the exposure to pricing errors is also larger. Potential losses due to underpricing of policies are related to the amount of premiums written, while policyholder surplus measures the cushion available to absorb such losses [
20].
To assess profitability, we employ alternatively the net margin ratio or the return-on-assets. The margin ratio (
) is net income divided by total net premiums earned [
16,
17]. It calculates the degree of profit of the insurer produced from its total revenue. It measures the amount of net profit that a company obtains per dollar of revenue gained. [
21] shows that operating margins are positively correlated with the rate of solvency. Thus, a high (low) margin ratio is a signal for high (low) financial solidity. The return-on-assets (
) is the ratio of net income to total assets, and high
denotes higher profitability. For example, [
7] uses the return-on-assets to assess the profitability of insurers in relation to corporate sustainability.
To assess the value of the company’s equity, we compute the price-to-book ratio (
) [
22]. [
23] recommend to use book value multiples in valuing insurance companies compared to earnings multiples. The authors argues that, unlike nonfinancial firms, the book value of equity seems to be a reasonable predictor of future earnings of insurers, as proved for example by evidence from [
20]. Finally, in our regressions the variable
accounts for the company’s size, and is computed as the natural logarithm of total assets [
16].
The definitions of all our variables are summarized in
Table 2. After winsorizing the variables at the 1st and 99th percentiles to mitigate the potential influence of outliers, for each segment we display descriptive statistics in
Table 3, while correlation coefficients in
Table 4 and
Table 5. We notice that
does not differ considerably between the two groups, as the median
is 0.26 in both segments. This value is close in magnitude to impact ratios estimated for banks by [
4]. Reserves are higher for Life and Health insurers, for which
and
are respectively 7.0% and 72%, compared to lower values equal to 2.4% and 57.8% for Property and Casualty insurers. Instead, Property and Casualty insurers seem to be more profitable, with median
equal to 2.4% with respect to 0.7%
of Life and Health insurers. However,
is close to 10% inside both groups. The correlation tables reveal a positive correlation between
and reserves, with maxim correlation equal to 0.13. For Property and Casualty insurers the correlation is significant with
and
, while for Life and Health insurers the correlation is significant with
and
.