A life care annuity is a bundled insurance product comprised of a life annuity and long-term care insurance. Some recent studies find the two risks - longevity risk and long-term care risk - to be opposing and thus life care annuities advantageous in regard to pooling the two risks. Based on...

The potential need for long-term care (LTC) is one of the greatest financial risks faced not only by the elderly, but also by their adult children, who often provide care or financial assistance. We investigate adult children's role in the demand for LTC insurance. Similar to flood insurance, we...

Motivated by a recent demographic study establishing a link between macroeconomic fluctuations and the mortality index kt in the Lee-Carter model, we assess the impact of macroeconomic fluctuations on the solvency of a life insurance company. Liabilities in our stochastic simulation framework...

Life insurers sell savings contracts with surrender options, allowing policyholders to prematurely withdraw guaranteed surrender values. Surrender options move toward the money when interest rates rise. Hence, higher interest rates raise surrender rates, as we document for the German life...

Historical evidence like the global financial crisis from 2007-09 highlights that sector concentration risk can play an important role for the solvency of insurers. However, current microprudential frameworks like the US RBC framework and Solvency II consider only name concentration risk...

Life insurers massively sell savings contracts with surrender options which allow policyholders to withdraw a guaranteed amount before maturity. These options move toward the money when interest rates rise. Using data on German life insurers, we estimate that a 1 percentage point increase in...

The Liikanen Group proposes contingent convertible (CoCo) bonds as a potential mechanism to enhance financial stability in the banking industry. Especially life insurance companies could serve as CoCo bond holders as they are already the largest purchasers of bank bonds in Europe. We develop a...

The present SUERF Study includes a selection of papers based on the authors’ contributions to the Vienna conference, jointly organized by SUERF, the OeNB and the Austrian Society for Bank Research. In reply to the financial crisis, the Great Recession and sovereign debt crisis, many central...

Motivated by a recent demographic study establishing a link betweenmacroeconomic fluctuations and the mortality index kt in the Lee-Cartermodel, we assess the impact of macroeconomic fluctuations on the solvencyof a life insurance company. Liabilities in our stochastic simulationframework are...

The Liikanen Group proposes contingent convertible (CoCo) bonds as a potential mechanism to enhance financial stability in the banking industry. Especially life insurance companies could serve as CoCo bond holders as they are already the largest purchasers of bank bonds in Europe. We develop a...