In this paper life insurance contracts based on an urn-of-urns model, with age-at-death asobservable variable, are analyzed. Premium payment functions based on the principles of "equivalence on an individual level" and "equivalence on a group level" are compared. Boththe aggregate loss and its...

Premiums and benefits associated with traditional life insurance contracts are usually specified as fixed amounts in policy conditions. However, reserve-dependent surrender values and reserve-dependent expenses are common in insurance practice. The famous Cantelli theorem in life insurance...

I assess how Basel III, Solvency II and the low interest rate environment will affect the financial connection between the bank and insurance sector by changing the funding patterns of banks as well as the investment strategies of life insurance companies. Especially for life insurance...

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...

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...

Households buy life insurance as part of their liquidity management. The option to surrender such a policy can serve as a buffer when a household faces a liquidity need. In this study, we investigate empirically which individual and household specific sociodemographic factors influence the...

A tontine provides a mortality driven, age-increasing payout structure through the pooling of mortality. Because a tontine does not entail any guarantees, the payout structure of a tontine is determined by the pooling of individual characteristics of tontinists. Therefore, the surrender decision...

This paper analyzes the numerical impact of different surplus distribution mechanisms on the risk exposure of a life insurance company selling with profit life insurance policies with a cliquet-style interest rate guarantee. Three representative companies are considered, each using a different...

Life insurers sell savings contracts with surrender options, which allow policyholders to prematurely receive guaranteed surrender values. These surrender options move toward the money when interest rates rise. Hence, higher interest rates raise surrender rates, as we document empirically by...