Comparing Alternative Structures of Financial Alliances

In this paper, we study alliances between banks and insurance companies. Our perspective is that of the top management of a financial enterprise, and we constrain ourselves to the retail market. We define six different structure models for financial alliances. The parameters of the models are the closeness of the alliance in terms of mutual ownership, and the question of whether alliance partners have overlapping service channels. Examples are given of the models in the Finnish banking and insurance market. We also characterize nine criteria according to which the previously defined models are to be compared to achieve the most attractive alliance model. Thus, we obtain a multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) problem. In the design of the criteria, representatives of the top management of Finnish banks and insurance companies have been consulted. Keywords: financial alliances; financial convergence; financial conglomerates; multi-criteria decision-making; strategic planning