Financial crisis in 2007–2008 have caused losses to life insurance companies issuing variable annuities with guarantees. This is partly due to failure of variable annuity (VA) issuers to anticipate the large variations in asset prices during the financial crisis times in their pricing...

We analyze the benefit to the insured of newly traded, innovative life insurance contracts. On a sequence of yearly reference days, the insured can choose between a guaranteed return (linked to the insurer's asset result) and a capped index participation. The cap is adjusted at the beginning of...