Interest rates have been very low for several years, which is particularly challenging for life insurers. Since 2001, German life insurers have had to set an additional reserve due to low interest rates to ensure the protection of policyholders. However, the method introduced at that time to...

Market risks account for an integral part of life insurers' risk profiles. This paper explores the market risk sensitivities of insurers in two large life insurance markets, namely the U.S. and Europe. Based on panel regression models and daily market data from 2012 to 2018, we analyze the...

Interest rate risk measurement and management of non-maturity deposit balances presents a challenge for practitioners and academic researchers as well. The paper provides a review of several methodological approaches focusing on the area of savings accounts rate sensitivity modeling and...

This study sheds light on risk exposures of cooperative banks in Austria, Germany and Italy. We investigate how major risk elements of banks in these countries have evolved over time, across countries and institutions. Cooperative banks’ exposure to risk is analyzed looking at aggregate risk...

Jesús Fernández-Villaverde, Pablo A. Guerrón-Quintana, Juan F. Rubio-Ramírez and Martín Uribe (2011) find that risk shocks are an important factor in explaining emerging market business cycles. We show that their model needs to be recalibrated because it underpredicts the targeted business...

This paper deals with the risk management of savings accounts. Savings accounts are non-maturing accounts bearing a relatively attractive rate of return and two embedded options: a customer's option to withdraw money at any time and a bank's option to set the deposit as it wishes. The risk...

Life insurers typically grant policyholders a surrender option. We demonstrate that the resulting lapse risk could materialise in the form of a "policyholder run" if interest rates were to increase sharply. An inverse stress test based on a unique set of regulatory panel data suggests that...

This paper investigates the effects of a rise in interest rate and lapse risk of endowment life insurance policies on the liquidity and solvency of life insurers. We model the book and market value balance sheet of an average German life insurer, subject to both GAAP and Solvency II regulation,...