THE EVALUATION OF MACROECONOMIC FACTORS INFLUENCE ON THE FINANCIAL PERFORMANCE OF GENERAL INSURANCE COMPANIES LISTED AT THE KUWAIT STOCK EXCHANGE
Musaed S. Alali - Assistant Professor, Department of Insurance and Banking, College of Business Studies, PAAET, Kuwait
Hussain S. Boyabes - Independent Researcher, Kuwait
Ahmad S. Alfailakawi - Independent Researcher, Kuwait
ABSTRACT
The insurance sector which is a part of the financial system in Kuwait plays a crucial role in transferring risk among entities to limit their losses through risk pooling mechanism. As a results, practitioners and policy makers should be aware of the factors, both internal and external, affecting that sector and identify their impacts. This study aims to examine the effect of macroeconomic factors which includes gross domestic product, growth in gross domestic product, inflation rate, interest rate, and GDP per capita on the profitability of general insurance companies listed at the Kuwait stock exchange over the period 2011-2017. A panel data collected from the financial statements of the six general insurance companies listed at the stock market were used to examine the effect of the macroeconomic factors on the profitability of these companies. Using ordinary least squares (OLS) multiple regression method, the results showed that macroeconomic factors did not have any significant effect on the profitability of the Kuwaiti insurance companies during the study period.
