On April 17, 2025, the SCOR Foundation held a webinar titled: “Insurers’ M&A in the United States during the 1990-2022 period: Is the Fed monetary policy a causal factor ?” delivered by Professor Georges Dionne.

The webinar investigates the causes of the gap in mergers and acquisitions (M&As) between life and non-life insurers in the US from 1990 to 2022. DID analysis indicates a parallel trend between M&As in the life insurance and nonlife insurance sectors from 1990 to 2012, and a significant difference after 2012. There was a shock in the life insurance market that resulted in a reduction in M&As after 2012. Variable annuity sales and profitability in the life insurance sector declined after 2012. Evidence suggests that low interest rates observed during the implementation of the Fed’s quantitative easing policy from 2008 to 2012 caused the difference in M&As in the life sector after 2012.

Georges Dionne leads the research project “The effects of inflation on insurers’ performance and value”, which is funded by the SCOR Foundation from 2023-2025.

Go to the project page

Georges Dionne

Georges Dionne is a professor in the Department of Finance at HEC Montréal. He holds the Canada Research Chair in Risk Management and is a member of the board of SCOR Canada. His awards include the Les Échos (2001) and Kulp-Wright awards (2002) for his book Handbook of Insurance, the PRMIA award (2006), the Bank of Canada NFA Conference award (2006), an Honorary PhD conferred by the Université d’Orléans, France (2006), the Innis-Gérin Medal from the Royal Society of Canada (2011), the Marcel-Dagenais award (1991, 2012), the John S. Bickley Founder’s Award from the International Insurance Society (2017), the Paper of the Year from the Journal of Operational Risk (2018), and the Harris-Schlesinger prize in 2022. He became a Fellow of the Canadian Economics Association in 2019. 
He published the third edition of the Handbook of Insurance in 2025: https://www.risksresearch.com/.