There are some obvious parallels with the banking sector. Banks have been using
securitization methods and swaps to exploit specialization economies since the early
1980s: one bank might originate a loan, another might service it, a third might warehouse
it, and a fourth might fund it. Such methods have proven especially useful with
standardized products (such as mortgage loans, credit card loans and auto loans), and
there are clear parallels with standardized insurance products.13 There is also another
analogy. A long-standing issue in banking is that banks frequently develop sector expertise
that could (and sometimes does) lead to a dangerously large part of their loan
book being concentrated in a small range of industrial sectors: specialization often
leads to vulnerability. However, in recent years, credit default swaps have helped to
ease this problem by providing banks with a low-cost and flexible means of exchanging
sector-specific risk for risks outside their core territory. This has allowed banks
to reap economies arising from their sector expertise while also achieving a greater
degree of portfolio diversification than would otherwise be possible.14 There is every
reason to think that insurance companies could benefit in similar ways.