2008年的金融海嘯，重創全球金融市場，台灣壽險業亦蒙受巨大的損失。究其原因，除人為的過度融資及信用過度膨脹外，另一原因，乃是公司治理監督機制尚有待加強。因此，本研究以2002 年至2009 年間我國公開發行的壽險公司為研究對象，運用資料包絡分析法（Data Envelopment Analysis, DEA），以「CCR投入導向」為基礎評估壽險業的經營效率，並以Tobit迴歸模型檢測公司治理機制與壽險公司績效之關聯性。然而，過去以資料包絡分析法衡量壽險公司經營效率的文獻，多以員工與資本作為投入變數，保費收入作為產出變數，本研究考量投資收益對於壽險業的重要性，除採用上述投入及產出變數外，另加入資金運用金額為投入項，投資收益為產出項，以對照考慮資金運用對實證結果之影響。此外，本研究另以總資產報酬率(Return on Assets, ROA)作為壽險公司績效之評估指標，希冀透過不同的績效衡量指標，使研究結果更具參考性。 本研究發現，家族控制與非家族控制的壽險公司具有顯著不同的效率值，在公司治理變數及控制變數上亦有明顯的差異。Tobit迴歸結果顯示，董監事持股比率與效率值間存在顯著的正向關係，表示董監事持股愈多，會促使壽險公司有較佳的績效表現，符合「利益收斂假說」。董事會規模與效率值呈顯著負相關，此結果表示，當董事會規模越大，可能因董事人數較多而有搭便車(Free Riders)之情形。值得注意的是，公司規模與效率值間的關係，在加入資金運用金額及投資收益後會有所改變，顯見衡量壽險公司效率值時，考量資金運用成效的重要性。 The financial tsunami in 2008 collapsed global financial markets and led to a great loss for life insurance companies in Taiwan. Other than the abuse of financial leverage, this crisis could also attribute to the failure of corporate governance system. Using the sample of public life insurance companies in Taiwan, this study examines the relation between corporate governance and firm performance by employing data envelopment analysis (DEA) to measure the performance of life insurance firms. We adopt labor and equity capital as inputs and use premium as an output. More important, we also include the investments and related returns as the input and output, respectively. Besides, we use return on assets (ROA) as an alternative performance measure for robustness test. We find that DEA efficiencies and corporate governance variables between family-controlled and non family-controlled firms are significantly different. Furthermore, the results from Tobit regressions show that board ownership has a positive impact on the efficiencies, which presents that the performance increases with board ownership. We also find that the board size has a negative relation with the efficiencies, indicating that there is a free-riders problem in the board. It is worthy to note that the relation between firm size and performance will reverse as investments and related incomes are considered in measuring efficiencies. Therefore, investments returns play an important role in evaluating efficiency performance for life insurance firms in Taiwan.
