Abstract. Only six studies, of more than two hundred and sixty observed concerning life insurance company (LIC) efficiency, truly examine how efficiency affects profits. Four show inefficiency greatly affects LIC (financial) outcome and survivorship. This clearly indicates that LIC efficiency is crucial to assess, significantly enhancing the ability to monitor LICs.

The six papers, not exploring profit improvement, contain deficiencies. This paper is the first to analyze the feasibility of life insurers improving profit via efficiency versus other business characteristics. The conclusion is that the best and possibly only process for LICs to increase profit is via efficiency.

Keywords: life insurance, efficiency, profit, output/input proxies, stochastic frontier analysis.