This article empirically examines the profitability and risk implications of the supply of reinsurance by incidental reinsurers to unaffiliated insurers. For a sample of U.S. property–liability insurers that do not specialize in reinsurance, we find that the decision to assume a nontrivial amount of external reinsurance (from unaffiliated insurers) increases firm risk and decreases firm profitability. However, when we examine internal reinsurance assumption (from affiliated insurers) we find no evidence of a negative performance effect. The fact that the negative performance effect is confined to external reinsurance assumption suggests that asymmetric information is driving the increased risk and decreased profitability. Further analysis shows that reinsurers are able to mitigate the negative impact of information asymmetries by engaging in long-term contracting and by focusing their reinsurance assumption in fewer lines of business.

本文实证检验了附带再保险公司向非附属保险公司提供再保险的盈利能力和风险影响。对于不专门从事再保险业务的美国财产责任保险公司的样本，我们发现，决定承担大量外部再保险（来自非附属保险公司）会增加公司风险并降低公司盈利能力。然而，当我们检查内部再保险假设（来自附属保险公司）时，我们没有发现负面绩效影响的证据。负面绩效影响仅限于外部再保险假设的事实表明，信息不对称正在推动风险增加和盈利能力下降。