A Dynamic DEA Model for Indian Life Insurance Companies

Efficiency studies relating to the Indian life insurance companies have so far used static one-period data envelopment analysis (DEA) models for the purpose of comparison of performance. A major weakness of the static framework is that the efficiency results are not inter-temporally comparable. In order to overcome this problem, the present study uses a dynamic slacks-based DEA model proposed by Tone and Tsutsui (2010) for performance evaluation of 15 in-sample life insurance companies for a seven-year period (2005-2006 to 2011-2012). The unique selling point (USP) of the present approach is that unlike the conventional static DEA models, the present framework, by using a link variable, connects the observed years and thereby creates a common benchmark. The results reveal significant fluctuations in mean technical efficiency over the period of observation.