We model and measure simultaneous large losses of the market value of insurers to understand the impact of shocks on the insurance sector. The downside risk of insurers is explicitly modelled by common and idiosyncratic risk factors. Since reinsurance is important for the capacity of insurers,...

We discuss risk measures representing the minimum amount of capital a financial institution needs to raise and invest in a pre-specified eligible asset to ensure it is adequately capitalized. Most of the literature has focused on cash-additive risk measures, for which the eligible asset is a...

Payments of life insurance products depend on the uncertain future evolution of survival probabilities. This uncertainty is referred to as longevity risk. Existing literature shows that the effect of longevity risk on single life annuities can be substantial, and that there exists a (natural)...

This paper considers the financial optimization problem of a firm with several sub-businesses striving for its optimal RORAC. An insightful example shows that the implementation of classical gradient capital allocation can be suboptimal if division managers are allowed to venture into all...

Insurance companies can leverage the regulatory requirement of a "Risk Management Own Risk and Solvency Assessment" (RMORSA) to improve risk-to-reward decision-making in general, and business planning in particular. This paper profiles several RMORSA-based improvements and explains how those...

We study the optimal design of clearing systems. We analyze how counterparty risk should be allocated, whether traders should be fully insured against that risk, and how moral hazard affects the optimal allocation of risk. The main advantage of centralized clearing, as opposed to no or...

Reinsurance is a transaction insurance firms use to hedge risk. Existing studies have only investigated the demand for reinsurance. Thus, we do not have direct evidence on whether the use of reinsurance creates value. Our study provides this evidence. We find a positive relation between the use...

Mortality models used to assess longevity risk and retirement funding have been extended to stochastic models with trends and systematic risk. Systematic risk cannot be readily diversified in an insurance pool or pension fund. It is an important factor in assessing solvency and highlighting the...