企業內部服務提供：以美國產險業內部精算師準備金提存為例

In-House Provision of Corporate Services: The Case of Property-Casualty Insurers and In-House Actuarial Loss Reserve Certification

本文旨在研究美國產險公司會計報告中經理人的自由裁量權與使用公司內部或指定精算師進行損失準備金簽證之間的關係。我們以損失準備金誤差作為經理人自由裁量權的衡量指標。研究結果顯示，由於盈餘管理動機的不同，因此有必要在進行實證分析時，將樣本區分成財務體質健康或孱弱的保險公司。此外，無論是財務體質健康或孱弱的保險公司，其使用公司內部或指定精算師進行損失準備金簽證都存在較多低估準備金的情況，儘管對於財務體質孱弱的保險公司而言，低估程度更大。最後，沙賓法案（Sarbanes-Oxley Act; SOX）的頒布導致財務體質孱弱的上市保險公司在使用外部精算師時會出具更加審慎的財務報告，但對於使用內部精算師的財務體質孱弱上市保險公司，則並未產生影響。

The purpose of this research is to investigate the relationship between managerial discretion in U.S. Property-Casualty (P-C) accounting reports and the use of an in-house or Appointed Actuary to certify loss reserves; we use loss reserving errors as measures of managerial discretion. The results indicate that it is important to distinguish between healthy and weak insurers in the analysis because their incentives to earnings management are different. Also, using an in-house or Appointed Actuary to certify loss reserves is associated with more under-reserving than when an external actuary is used for both weak and healthy insurers, although the degree of under-reserving is greater for weak insurers. Finally, the enactment of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) leads to more conservative financial reporting for weak publicly-traded P-C insurers using external actuaries but not for weak publicly-traded P-C insurers using in-house actuaries.