This study investigates the potential effect of economic policy uncertainty, geopolitical risk, non-oil output, inflation and corporate governance features on insurance companies in Saudi Arabia using quarterly data over the period 2013–2019. More specifically, we apply estimation method panel autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) to model the long- and short-term relationships. Our empirical results reveal negative short-term effects of geopolitical risk and uncertainty about government economic policy on insurance demand. However, the effect of the latter is not permanent. Our results support the assumed ‘demand following theory’ in the long-term, which, in turn, is an indication of the fact that the demand for insurance policies is dependent on economic growth and more susceptible to inflation. Our evidence shows that corporate governance has a significant effect on insurance demand in the long term, whereas a Shariah board has no significant impact.

本研究使用 2013-2019 年期间的季度数据，调查经济政策不确定性、地缘政治风险、非石油产出、通货膨胀和公司治理特征对沙特阿拉伯保险公司的潜在影响。更具体地说，我们应用估计方法面板自回归分布滞后 (ARDL) 来模拟长期和短期关系。我们的实证结果揭示了地缘政治风险和政府经济政策的不确定性对保险需求的短期负面影响。但是，后者的影响不是永久性的。我们的结果长期支持假设的“需求跟随理论”，这反过来表明保险单的需求取决于经济增长并且更容易受到通货膨胀的影响。