Alexandru Barbu 

Assistant Professor of Finance, INSEAD

PhD, London Business School

I am an Assistant Professor in Finance at INSEAD. My research focuses on financial intermediation, insurance and household finance. 

In ongoing work,  I show how gaps in consumer protection regulation have allowed insurers to recover losses in guaranteed return products after the financial crisis. I examine how differences in historical regulation have shaped the availability of private-sector provided market risk insurance across countries, and how compensation structures in the securities industry shape the quality of financial advice. 

My research has won the Western Finance Association Best Paper Award, the BlackRock Applied Research Award, the CEPR Household Finance Best Paper Award, the Econ Job Market Best Paper Award from the European Economic Association and the UniCredit Foundation, and the Doctoral Student Best Paper Award from the Eastern Finance Association.

I will next present at the Chicago Conference on Empirical Finance on May 12th, the Rome Junior Finance Conference on June 15-16th and the Western Finance Association on June 25-28th. I am also available as discussant at the SFS Cavalcade on May 22-25th, the EIOPA ECB Research Workshop on Insurance Companies and Pension Funds on May 30th, the Insead Finance Symposium on June 7-8th, the NBER Summer Institute on July 20-21st and the European Finance Association on August 16-19th.