Investment Strategies and Risk Management for Participating Life Insurance Contracts

24 Pages Posted: 16 Apr 2009

See all articles by Laura Ballotta

Laura Ballotta

Bayes Business School (formerly Cass) - City, University of London

Steven Haberman

City University London - Faculty of Actuarial Science

Date Written: April 16, 2009

Abstract

This paper proposes an asset allocation strategy for the risk management of the broad category of participating life insurance policies. The nature of the liability implied by these contracts allows us to treat them as options written on the reference portfolio backing the policy; consequently, the valuation approach is based on classical contingent claim theory. This leads to the identification of additional safety loadings against the risk of default implied by these contracts, and the setting up of suitable investment strategies aimed at minimizing this risk. The impact on the solvency requirements for the capital of the insurer of the proposed asset allocation strategy is analyzed by means of Monte Carlo techniques. Stress testing is considered as well with respect to the key risk factors of the model, such as the equity volatility and the market interest rate. The numerical analysis shows that, for the specific policy design considered in this paper, a suitable choice of the participation rate combined with the proposed investment strategy minimizes the overall default risk of the insurance company, both in terms of probability of default and expected severity.

Keywords: asset allocation, fair valuation, Monte Carlo methods, participating contracts, solvency requirements, TVaR

JEL Classification: G13, G23

Suggested Citation

Ballotta, Laura and Haberman, Steven, Investment Strategies and Risk Management for Participating Life Insurance Contracts (April 16, 2009). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1387682 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1387682

Laura Ballotta (Contact Author)

Bayes Business School (formerly Cass) - City, University of London ( email )

Faculty of Finance
106 Bunhill Row
London, EC1Y 8TZ
United Kingdom

HOME PAGE: http://www.city.ac.uk/people/academics/laura-ballotta

Steven Haberman

City University London - Faculty of Actuarial Science ( email )

London
United Kingdom

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