Agents, space and market shares: A spatial analysis of the Swiss insurance market

Abstract

In this paper, we use cross-sectional business data of a cooperating major insurance company, and merge it with other available spatial data at municipal level in Switzerland to explain geographically varying market shares of its tied agent channel within the country. More specifically, the effects of distribution intensity by the tied agents and channel competition, among others, are considered in the proposed models, which also allow to identify areas of over- and underperformance. The results of the spatial econometric analysis indicate that the insurance market of the company is spatially organised.