Universal life policies are the most popular insurance contract design in theUnited States. They have either a level death benefit paying a fixed faceamount, or an increasing death benefit, which additionally pays the availablecash value, and both types include the option to switch from one to...

Life insurers often claim that the life settlement industry reduces theirsurrender profits and leads to an adverse shift in their portfolio of insuredrisks, i.e., bad risks remain in the portfolio instead of surrendering.In this paper, we aim to quantify the effect of altered...

In this paper, we first discuss the characteristics and major benefits of the Swissrisk-based capital standards for insurance companies (Swiss Solvency Test), introduced in 2006. As the insurance industry is one of the largest institutional investors in Switzerland, changes to its asset and...

The aim of this paper is to examine the impact of capital and risk transfer instruments on diversification and insolvency risk in a parent-subsidiary relationship. To better assess the effects, we compare this setting to the case of a holding company and an integrated financial group. In the...

The aim of this paper is to develop an alternative approach for assessing an insurer’s solvency as a proposal for a standard model for Solvency II. Instead ofderiving minimum capital requirements—as it is done in solvency regulation—our model provides company-specific minimum standards for...

The aim of this article is to identify fair equity-premium combinations for non-lifeinsurers that satisfy solvency capital requirements imposed by regulatory authorities. In particular, we compare target capital erived using the value at risk concept as planned for Solvency II in the European...

In recent years, industry loss warranties (ILWs) have become increasingly popular in the reinsurance market. The defining feature of ILW contracts is their dependence on an industry loss index. The use of an index reduces moral hazard and generally results in lower prices compared to...

In this article we identify risk and return profiles of two types of investment guaranteesin unit-linked life insurance products: an interest rate guarantee and a lookbackguarantee. This is done by comparing guarantee costs and performance for thematurity payoff and by testing the investment...

In financial groups enterprise risk management is becoming increasingly importantin controlling and managing the different independent legal entities in thegroup. The aim of this paper is to assess and relate risk concentration and joint defaultprobabilities of the group’s legal entities in...