本研究旨在研究美國壽險業的公司治理與風險性資本的關係，自Jensen 在1986 年提出自由現金流量與公司治理品質的相關探討後，公司治理議題引起學術界及市場面的興趣，相關文獻江山代有新人出。過去探討公司治理機制的文獻多半將期與公司財務表現或其經濟面意涵做連結，如Gompers, Ishhii and Metrick 在2003 年就建置了評估外部公司治理的G-Index，且他們研究發現藉適當投資組合操作能賺得股票報酬，然探討公司治理相關文獻很多卻少有針對金融業（尤其是壽險業）探究的文章，這是本研究的研究動機之一。其二，風險管理的觀念易發普及，這使得權責主管機關對保險業清償能力 的要求益發健全，公司治理成為其中一個不可或缺的環節，而公司的清償能力可以從滿足資本適足性要求的程度窺見一二，故本研究試圖驗證是否壽險公司的公司治理與清償能力（滿足資本適足性要求的程度）兩者兼具有一定程度的關聯。因受限於可取得資料的年份，且美國NAIC 的資料庫須同時與G-Index 資料、信評機構A.M. Best 評等資料及機構人持股資料合併，本研究資料期間為2002 年至2006 年，觀察值525 筆。本研究以平衡縱橫斷面資料迴歸型式驗證風險性資本比率與公司治理的關係。研究結果發現同時考慮內部及外部公司治理的情況下，由於保險業屬高度監管行業，機構投資人持股高的公司，其對風險性資本比率的影響較外部公司治理正向顯著。然本研究以身為相關領域文獻探討的試金石自詡，期望未來針對此議題能有更多發展的可能性。 Various corporate governance mechanisms are proposed to mitigate agency conflicts since Jensen’s (1986) argument on the association of free cash flow and governance quality. Indices are constructed to be served to study the relationship between the quality of governance and the economic or financial performance of companies.Gompers, Ishii, and Metrick (2003) constructed a broad index (G-Index) of 24 firm-specific provisions. However, less public and academic interest has been directed at financial service industries. The special industrial characteristic with intense regulatory scrutiny is beneficial to analyze whether insurers’ corporate governance mechanisms work well. With fewer literatures focusing on insurance industry, we hereby try to examine the corporate governance of life insurance companies. With regard to risk management, insurance supervisory authorities focuses on not only finance and accounting but also corporate governance and market behavior. Now that corporate governance is subsumed in insurer risk management, we try to test if there is a link between corporate governance mechanism and solvency (capital adequacy requirements). Although the results show inconsistent evidence with our hypothesis, it seems to be reasonable that external corporate governance mechanism doesn’t make effects on RBC given a highly regulated situation. Contrarily, the coefficient on institutional investor is significantly positive, which means the internal mechanism of institutional investor does affects on RBC ratios. There is a potential to be developed to explain more detailed and complicated cases since our findings can be viewed as being the building blocks of others.
