Insurers sell retail financial products called variable annuities that package mutual funds with minimum return guarantees over long horizons. Variable annuities accounted for $1.5 trillion or 34 percent of U.S. life insurer liabilities in 2015. Sales fell and fees increased after the 2008...

The financial meltdown that began in 2007 revealed problems with the financial guarantee insurers and regulation of these insurers. Financial guarantee insurers, with business models dependent on AAA-credit ratings, were exposed to risks that threatened those ratings. These insurers had four...

The 2008-2009 financial crisis was the most serious shock to the U.S. financial system since the Great Depression of the 1930s. A number of large financial institutions failed during the crisis. Many institutions that survived did so only because of extraordinary actions undertaken by company...

Shadow insurance is a regulatory loophole exploited by certain insurance groups to increase risk exposure, potentially destabilizing the financial system. In this paper, we evaluate the contribution of shadow insurance to systemic risk of the global financial sector using a sample of 215...

This paper is to examine life insurance companies in the OECD countries to identify the major firm-specific determinants of the profitability and test the impact of regulatory system in those countries. We consider two important agency structures of insurance industry supervision and...

We propose that financial institutions can act as asset insulators, holding assets for the long run to protect their valuations from consequences of exposure to financial markets. We illustrate the empirical relevance of this theory for the balance sheet behavior of a large class of...

We reexamine life insurance and annuity pricing during the 2008 financial crisis. In contrastwith previous research, we find that insurers sold policies at significantly elevated markups overtheir fundamental values during the crisis months and, moreover, that statutory accountingpressures had...

The Liikanen Group proposes contingent convertible (CoCo) bonds as a potential mechanism to enhance financial stability in the banking industry. Especially life insurance companies could serve as CoCo bond holders as they are already the largest purchasers of bank bonds in Europe. We develop a...

The Liikanen Group proposes contingent convertible (CoCo) bonds as a potential mechanism to enhance financial stability in the banking industry. Especially life insurance companies could serve as CoCo bond holders as they are already the largest purchasers of bank bonds in Europe. We develop a...