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- April 2025
- Case
Thrivent: From Insurance Agents to Financial Advisors
By: Hubert Joly, Leonard A. Schlesinger and Tom Quinn
Thrivent, a midwestern financial services company with a centuries-long history rooted in Lutheranism, had reached $10 billion in revenue mostly by selling life insurance. In the 2020s, however, CEO Terry Rasmussen began a transformation process centered around the... View Details
Keywords: Change Management; Transformation; Talent and Talent Management; Customer Focus and Relationships; Customer Value and Value Chain; Forecasting and Prediction; Employee Relationship Management; Retention; Selection and Staffing; Job Design and Levels; Human Capital; Leading Change; Mission and Purpose; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Culture; Insurance Industry; Insurance Industry; United States; Minneapolis
- June 2023
- Teaching Note
From Cradle to Heaven: Taikang Insurance Group
By: William C. Kirby and Noah B. Truwit
Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 320-088. The case explores the rise of Taikang Insurance Group and its quest to be a leader of one of China's fastest-growing industries. Due to China's underdeveloped social welfare state, Taikang saw an opportunity for the private... View Details
- June 2023
- Article
Regulatory Limits to Risk Management
By: Ishita Sen
Variable annuities, the largest liability of U.S. life insurers, are investment products containing long-dated minimum return guarantees. I show that guarantees with similar economic risks are treated differently by regulation and these differences impact insurers’... View Details
- July 2022 (Revised February 2025)
- Case
A Soul and a Service: North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance
By: Tom Nicholas and John Masko
The North Carolina Mutual and Provident Association (the Mutual) was founded in 1898 as a for-profit entity selling life insurance catering to the Black community. The Mutual was entering a field crowded with established White-owned competitors that largely refused to... View Details
- 2021
- Working Paper
The Great Unequalizer: Initial Health Effects of COVID-19 in the United States
By: Marcella Alsan, Amitabh Chandra and Kosali I. Simon
We measure inequities from the COVID-19 pandemic on mortality and hospitalizations in the United States during the early months of the outbreak. We discuss challenges in measuring health outcomes and health inequality, some of which are specific to COVID-19 and others... View Details
- February 2020 (Revised June 2020)
- Case
From Cradle to Heaven: Taikang Insurance Group
By: William C. Kirby, Shu Lin, John P. McHugh and Yuanzhuo Wang
Taikang Insurance Group was a leading Chinese insurance and financial services institution. It operated in the insurance, asset management, and health and senior care industries. Due to China’s underdeveloped social welfare state, Taikang saw an opportunity for the... View Details
- 2020
- Working Paper
Internal Models, Make Believe Prices, and Bond Market Cornering
By: Ishita Sen and Varun Sharma
Exploiting position-level heterogeneity in regulatory incentives to misreport and novel data on regulators, we document that U.S. life insurers inflate the values of corporate bonds using internal models. We estimate an additional $9-$18 billion decline in regulatory... View Details
- June 2019
- Case
ClearLife: From Prospect to Platform
By: Alexander Braun, Lauren Cohen, Mauro Elvedi and Jiahua Xu
ClearLife’s first product was a trading and analytics platform for participants in the U.S. life settlement market, the secondary market for life insurance. ClearLife played a key role in facilitating transactions and devising a common language for expressing value and... View Details
- May 2019 (Revised May 2020)
- Case
fidentiaX: The Tradable Insurance Marketplace on Blockchain
By: Alexander Braun, Lauren H. Cohen and Jiahua Xu
Three years ago, Alvin Ang and his partner founded fidentiaX in Singapore, with the ambition to create the world’s first marketplace for tradable insurance policies on blockchain. With a 26-page white paper, the start-up closed a successful fundraising round through an... View Details
- 2018
- Working Paper
The Impact of Pensions and Insurance on Global Yield Curves
By: Robin Greenwood and Annette Vissing-Jorgensen
We document a strong effect of pension and insurance company (P&I) assets on the long end of the yield curve. Using data from 26 countries, the yield spread between 30-year and 10-year government bond yields is negatively related to the ratio of pension assets (in... View Details
- June 2018
- Background Note
Introduction to Life Settlements
By: Alexander Braun, Lauren H. Cohen, Christopher J. Malloy and Jiahua Xu
Life insurance is an asset owned by the majority of American adults (61%). Note that this 61% penetration rate is essentially at parity with home ownership (64%) and higher than that of 401(k) retirement account ownership (53%). Life settlements, or life insurance... View Details
- May 2018 (Revised June 2018)
- Case
Ashar Group: Brokers and Co-opetition in the Life Settlement Industry
By: Alexander Braun, Lauren H. Cohen, Christopher J. Malloy and Jiahua Xu
Connecting life insurance policyholders with potential investors (called Life Settlement Providers), Ashar Group plays a pivotal role in the industry. Its current position is, however, increasingly being challenged by consumer-direct models, led by major providers... View Details
- Article
Understanding the Advice of Commissions-Motivated Agents: Evidence from the Indian Life Insurance Market
By: Santosh Anagol, Shawn Cole and Shayak Sarkar
We conduct a series of field experiments to evaluate the quality of advice provided by life insurance agents in India. Agents overwhelmingly recommend unsuitable, strictly dominated products, which provide high commissions to the agent. Agents cater to the beliefs of... View Details
Keywords: Advice; Customers; Insurance; Service Operations; Motivation and Incentives; Ethics; India
- 2014
- Chapter
Comparative Regulation of Market Intermediaries: Insights from the Indian Life Insurance Market
By: Santosh Anagol, Shawn A. Cole and Shayak Sarkar
- September 2013
- Case
Advanced Leadership Pathways: General Gale Pollock and Services for the Vision Impaired
By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Juliane Calingo Schwetz and Patricia Bissett Higgins
In July 2012, retired United States Army Major General Gale Pollock created Elevivo, a venture that worked on developing a comprehensive disease management software system to support the growing number of visually impaired individuals by providing them with tailored... View Details
Keywords: United States; Health Care; Health Care Education; Insurance Companies; Disease Management; Technology; Military; Leadership Skills; Health; Health Care and Treatment; Education; Insurance; Information Technology; Entrepreneurship; Leadership; Information Technology Industry; Health Industry; United States
- 2013
- Case
Advanced Leadership Pathways: General Gale Pollock and Services for the Vision Impaired
By: Rosabeth M. Kanter, Juliane Calingo Schwetz and Patricia Bissett Higgins
In July 2012, retired United States Army Major General Gale Pollock created Elevivo, a venture that worked on developing a comprehensive disease management software system to support the growing number of visually impaired individuals by providing them with tailored... View Details
- August 2013
- Teaching Note
Seeking Alpha in the Afterlife: CMG Life Services and the Life Settlement Industry
By: Lauren Cohen
- July 2013 (Revised August 2013)
- Case
Seeking Alpha in the Afterlife: CMG Life Services and the Life Settlement Industry
By: Lauren Cohen
- April 2013 (Revised November 2013)
- Case
Growing Financial Services in India: Aditya Birla Financial Services Group
By: Paul M. Healy and Rachna Tahilyani
Aditya Birla Financial Services Group is a large, broad-based, Indian financial services institution offering products ranging from life insurance and mutual funds to private equity. The company has witnessed a turnaround in recent years and regained lost market share.... View Details
Keywords: Regulatory Environment; Finance; Asset Management; Business Growth and Maturation; Transformation; Leadership Development; Leadership Style; Business Processes; Organizational Structure; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Competitive Strategy; Diversification; Segmentation; Insurance Industry; Insurance Industry; India
- November 2011 (Revised March 2013)
- Case
China Life: Micro Insurance for the Poor
By: Shawn Cole and Lilei Xu
China Life must decide whether to accept the government's "invitation" to develop a microinsurance product for the rural poor. Can it be done profitably? View Details