The aim of this research was to explore one of the most intriguing dimensions of every firm’s business—its performance. Aside from analysing the influence of industry’s characteristics on the firm’s performance, the authors addressed the characteristics of dynamic capabilities and their role in contribution to the firm’s ultimate success. The analysis was conducted on a sample of 118 small Croatian manufacturing companies. The application of the Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) approach revealed a statistically significant influence of both the industry’s characteristics (represented by Porter’s five forces framework) and dynamic capabilities (based on Teece’s theory) on the firm’s performance, where the influence of dynamic capabilities is proven to be larger than that of the industry.

This paper analyses the influence of insurance company-specific, insurance industry-specific and macroeconomic variables on performance of insurance markets in selected Central and Eastern European countries. Specifically, the research covers insurance industry in Croatia, Slovenia, Hungary and Poland in the period 2010 – 2014. Two performance variables were employed in the model, i.e. return on assets (ROA) and return on equity (ROE) while explanatory variables comprise of size measured on the basis of gross written premium, type dummy variable indicating life, non-life or composite insurance company, share of premium ceded to reinsurance, combined ratio, ownership variable indicating foreign or domestic ownership, age, organizational form dummy variable referring to joint stock companies or mutual and real GDP per capita growth. Employing static panel model results of the analysis reveal that variable age positively and significantly affect performance when measured with both ROA and ROE. Moreover, another variable that significantly influences performance in terms of ROE is real GDP per capita growth taking a positive sign.

Background: Financial stability or soundness of insurance companies has gained importance over the years, especially after the financial crisis of 2008. Various stakeholders such as policy makers, regulators, the insured, etc. are interested in keeping the insurance sector stable since it contributes to overall financial stability. Objectives: The authors explore the determinants of insurers’ soundness in selected countries in Central and Eastern Europe. The analysis covers life, non-life and composite insurers that operated in Croatia, Hungary, and Poland in the period 2013 – 2017. Methods/Approach: A set of insurer – specific, industry – specific and macroeconomic variables are taken into consideration for having a potential influence on soundness measured by the Z-score. The variables include the size based on total assets, the share of premium ceded to reinsurance, claims growth, gross written premium growth, the premium to surplus ratio, market shares held by the five largest insurers, the share of gross written premium in the gross domestic product (GDP) and the GDP per capita growth. Results: The findings reveal that soundness of Croatian insurers is positively influenced by the size of an insurer. Both in Hungary and Poland reinsurance plays an important factor positively affecting soundness. Conclusions: Each of the insurance markets covered by the analysis reveals its characteristics and offers guidelines on factors influencing financial stability.

This paper investigates the influence of gender diversity in the boardroom of Croatian banks on their performance. Specifically, we deal with both management and supervisory boards. Moreover, based on critical mass theory, the authors try to find out what constitutes critical mass. Using a static panel analysis on a sample of all commercial banks that operated in the period 2002-2014, three models were estimated with return on assets (ROA), return on equity (ROE) and net interest margin (NIM) as dependent variables. Board structure variables include gender of the chairperson, size of the board, share of women on the board and four dummy variables constructed on critical mass theory, specifically uniform group, skewed group, tilted group and balanced group. Other controls employed in the model include capital adequacy, the growth rate of assets at the bank level, ownership, age and a crisis dummy. The main finding is that when a critical mass of 20%-40% of women on the management board has been reached, bank performance improves.

The aim of this paper is to test the influence of bancassurance as a distribution channel on performance of non-life insurance sector in selected European countries. The analysis refers to 2009 – 2015 period and it is conducted using static panel analysis. Performance measures employed comprise of sales profitability as well as of profitability ratio of technical activity whereas independent variables used in the model include share of bancassurance, market share, gross written premium growth rate, claims growth rate, insurance density, share of premium in GDP, share of reinsurance and number of insurance companies. The results of the analysis in both models reveal that market share prove to be statistically significant determinant of insurance sector performance negatively affecting performance. Furthermore, insurance density has statistically significant and positive influence on performance measured with profitability ratio of technical activity.

Accession of Croatia to the EU brought legal, regulatory and market changes for the insurance companies. The question that arises is whether the new environment in which the companies operate has improved their efficiency. Accordingly, the aim of this paper is to separately estimate the efficiency of non-life and life insurance industry in Croatia and to compare it through the period before (2009-2012) and after (2013-2018) Croatian accession to the EU. The research is based on the Data Envelopment Analysis and the obtained results indicate an average increase in overall technical efficiency in both, non-life and life sector in period after Croatia’s accession to the EU. Still, this increase was not proved to be significant. Additionally, although increase in pure technical efficiency was significant in non-life sector, an insignificant slight decrease is recorded in life sector. Finally, insurers conducting (non)life business activities are mainly operating at increasing returns to scale.