Explore publications.

The financial market in general is where supply and demand for funds are met. In other words, funds saved in the financial market are directed to investments in order to contribute to the economy. In the Macedonian financial market, the banking sector is really dominant but also pension funds and insurance funds have an active role. This research will be studied the distribution of pension funds’ portfolios in the North Macedonian financial market. The global financial crisis in 2008 negatively affected the economies and financial markets of many countries, including the USA and Europe, and the effects of the crisis continued until 2013. This negatively affected the confidence in the financial markets, and the current surplus of funds was directed towards low-risk but fixed or low-yield financial instruments. As of 31.12.2018, fund accumulation in private pension funds amounted to 1.04 billion euros, corresponding to approximately 10 percent of GDP. The total premium production of insurance companies is around 157 million euros, while the GDP ratio of premium production is around 1.5 percent. Funds collected in both sectors are generally used in treasury bills, bank deposits, and stocks traded on the Macedonia Stock Exchange and foreign financial markets.

Insurance products and services in general are intended to transfer the risks brought about by both man-made and natural hazards from an individual or an entity to another. But since there is a misconception that insurance offered by commercial insurers are expensive and only for the moneyed consumers, or people need a lot of money to insure, insurance is only good for those who have big businesses or valuable properties. The poor and the vulnerable have relied on informal risk-mitigating measures like community-based insurance system or worst do not have any other means to help them cope and become risk-averse. This misconception has led to the conceptualization of microinsurance as an offshoot to microfinance primarily to offer insurance products and services that are affordable, the contractual obligations of both the insured and the insurer are nonlegalistic and lesser technical to make it more understandable to the intended market.  This study aims to assess if social-cultural beliefs affect the level of agreement of the respondents on the motivational dimensions of microinsurance.  A descriptive-correlational method was used in this research.  A 40-item self-made questionnaire was subjected to validity and reliability tests before the same was distributed to six hundred respondents all over the Philippines. There were 422 retrieved questionnaires which 70% of the total number of questionnaires deployed. Conclusively, the results indicate that the level of agreement of the respondents on the motivational dimensions of microinsurance vary from one factor to another