We study the valuation and hedging of unit-linked life insurance contracts in a setting where mortality intensity is governed by a stochastic process. We focus on model risk arising from different specifications for the mortality intensity. To do so we assume that the mortality intensity is...

In addition to an interest rate guarantee and annual surplus participation, life insurance contracts typically embed the right to stop premium payments during the term of the contract (paid-up option), to resume payments later (resumption option), or to terminate the contract early (surrender...

Motivated by the Guaranteed Minimum Death Benefits in various deferred annuities, we investigate the calculation of the expected discounted value of a payment at the time of death. The payment depends on the price of a stock at that time and possibly also on the history of the stock price. If...

In the US, defined benefit plans are insured by the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC). Taking account of the fact that the PBGC covers only the residual deficits of the pension fund the sponsoring company is unable to cover and that the plans can be prematurely terminated, we consider...

In this paper, we comprehensively analyze the catastrophe (cat) swap, a financial instrument which has attracted little scholarly attention to date. We begin with a discussion of the typical contract design, the current state of the market, as well as major areas of application. Subsequently, a...

This paper analyses the relationship between the level of a return guarantee in an equity-linked pension scheme and the proportion of an investor’s contribution needed to finance this guarantee. Three types of schemes are considered: investment guarantee, contribution guarantee and surplus...

We investigate the problem of pricing and hedging variable annuity contracts for which the fee deducted from the policyholder’s account depends on the account value. It is believed that state-dependent fees are beneficial to policyholders and insurers since they reduce policyholders’...

A new, very efficient and fairly simple simulation method for European basket and Asian options under the geometric Brownian motion assumption is presented. It is based on a new control variate method that uses the closed form of the expected payoff conditional on the assumption that the...

In this paper, the problem of partial hedging is studied by constructing hedging strategies that minimize conditional value-at-risk (CVaR) of the portfolio. Two dual versions of the problem are considered: minimization of CVaR with the initial wealth bounded from above, and minimization of...

Guaranteed lifetime withdrawal benefits (GLWB) embedded in variable annuities have become an increasingly popular type of life annuity designed to cover systematic mortality risk while providing protection to policyholders from downside investment risk. This paper provides an extensive study of...