A global approach for financial flows management in insurance companies. The italian experience

In insurance companies the financial flows’ dynamics is influenced by heterogeneous factors, some of them linked to technical features of insurance field and some others common to all financial dealers (i.e.market risks).The main recent changes which took place within the insurance field intensified competitive pressure andunderlined the key role of financial area in defining the overall firms’ profitability and imposing, at the same time, a higher attention to the financial risk control. Particularly important is the interest rate risk, for its effect on financial flows and on solvency firms conditions.Knowing that financial and technical activity are related in insurance companies, the main research question is: it is still worthy to look separately risks and investment policies or if it is better to acknowledge a new important management variable which fosters a global management approach (Asset and LiabilityManagement - ALM), within a decisional process oriented to the long term firm value creation and to thestabilization of profit margins?