Ethical behaviour and operating performance of insurance broker firms

In this research we investigate whether there is a relationship between the ethical behaviour of insurance brokers and their operating performance. Specifically, we focus on the practice of deferring the premiums charged to clients in order to invest them in short–term financial products and, as a result, gain an additional financial return to their traditional sources of income. We consider this practice to be an unethical behaviour since uninformed clients, that is, those who are not aware of the legal process of brokerage, expect the broker to immediately process the policy with the insurance company once the premium has been paid. We find that the better the performance and the larger the firm size, the worse the ethical behaviour.