Pricing and Hedging Equity-Linked Life Insurance Contracts Beyond the Classical Paradigm: The Principle of Equivalent Forward Preferences

Abstract

By applying the principle of equivalent forward preferences, this paper revisits the pricing and hedging problems for equity-linked life insurance contracts. The equity-linked contingent claim depends on, not only the future lifetime of the policyholder, but also the performance of the reference portfolio in the financial market for the segregated account of the policyholder. For both zero volatility and non-zero volatility forward utility preferences, prices and hedging strategies of the contract are represented by solutions of random horizon backward stochastic differential equations. Numerical illustration is provided for the zero volatility case. The derived prices and hedging strategies are also compared with classical results in the literature.

Keywords: Equity-Linked Life Insurance; Pricing and Hedging; Indifference Approach; Forward Utility Preferences; Random Horizon BSDEs

JEL Classification: G22; C61