Economic and Financial Performance of Supplementary Health Plan Companies

Abstract

The federal regulation of the Brazilian sector of Supplementary Health has been stimulating competitiveness between companies specialised in this area, who seek a maximization of results, in addition to meeting the requirements of said regulation. In this context, the knowledge of the economic-financial performance becomes very important, since it assists and serves as assessment of organizational decisions. So this article has as its research question: how is the economic-financial performance of health private plan operators going and what have been the differences between them over the years, considering the following indicators: Return on Total Assets, Operational Return on Total Assets, Return on Equity, Current Liquidity, Short-Term Debt and Loss? The overall objective is to identify the economic-financial performance of health private plan companies, as well as comparing its results inn the years 2008 to 2012. For this, a quantitative descriptive and documentary research was carried out, building a database with the accounting information from the companies to measure the performance through seven economic-financial indexes, and for data analysis and  interpretation, univariate statistics and the Median Test were done. The comparison of the median values of the indexes over the years showed, as a result, statistically significant differences in the companies’ economic-financial performances, when measured by the Return on Total Assets, Short-term Debt and Loss ratios. The results suggest further researches that relate performance to the structuring of the sector., including the companies’ management ways.