Investment portfolio management to meet or beat earnings expectations
研究发现，当保险公司母公司达到或略超分析师季度盈利预测时，保险公司会增加公司债券投资、减少股票和现金持有，以通过应计利息收入提升盈利；这种行为在治理弱、经理股权激励强等情况下更明显，且后续投资业绩更差。
Abstract Insurers can boost their earnings by accruing interest income from their corporate bond investments. We document that insurers have higher corporate bond investments as well as less equity and cash holdings, when their parents meet or just beat analysts’ quarterly earnings forecasts, compared to when their parents miss or comfortably beat the forecasts. The investment in corporate bonds to boost earnings is more pronounced when bond offerings provide more opportunities for accruing interest income, when the parent’s corporate governance is weaker, when the parent’s managers have more equity incentives, when insurers face more competition, when other earnings management techniques are used, or when the insurance segment is more important to the parent. Finally, insurers suspected of helping their parents meet or beat earnings benchmarks experience worse investment performance in subsequent years, presumably because, by investing more in corporate bonds, the insurers forgo investment opportunities with higher longer-term returns.