A Study On The Relationship Between The Structure And Market Size Of China's Personal Insurance Market

With the advance of market-oriented reform,the original premium income of China's personal insurance increased from 87.2 billion yuan in 1999 to 3.0996 trillion yuan in 2019,achieving a rapid growth and ranking the second in the global market in terms of premium size,which indicates that the market size is constantly expanding.From the perspective of market structure,only the people's insurance company of China completely monopolized the insurance business at the earliest,and the number of life insurance companies in China reached 103 by 2019.With the gradual increase of the main body of our country's life insurance market,the industry concentration degree also declines gradually,which means the structure of the life insurance market has changed.Different schools of industrial organization theory have different judgments on the relationship between market structure and market size.Due to the inconsistency between the structure of the life insurance market at the national level and the level of the prefecture-level city,and the provisions on the limitation of the business scope of insurance companies,this paper explores the relationship between the structure of the life insurance market and the market size at the prefecture-level,so as to provide reference for the supervision of the life insurance market and the formulation of the company's operating policies.Based on the industrial organization theory,this paper sorted out the panel data of prefecture-level cities in China from 2008 to 2017,took CR₄ and HHI as the measurement variables of market structure,premium income as the measurement variables of insurance market size,and selected per capita GDP and per capita disposable income as control variables.By clustering 297 prefecture-level cities with insurance density and per capita GDP as indicators,the relationship between the structure of the personal insurance market and the market size in different characteristic regions was explored.The main conclusions are as follows:first,the improvement of competition degree of regional life insurance market has a promoting effect on premium income;Second,there is a non-linear relationship between the structure of life insurance market and premium income in different regions,presenting a positive"U"shape.Thirdly,in regions with higher insurance density and higher per capita GDP,the competition degree of the personal insurance market has a stronger influence on the market size.Based on the empirical results,at the regulatory level,it is suggested to moderately relax the market access threshold to improve the degree of market competition,and flexibly adjust the policy orientation according to the local economic level,insurance density level and market concentration level.At the company level,it is necessary to improve its own operating efficiency and implement differentiation strategies according to the conditions of different regions.