During the financial crisis, life insurers sold long-term policies at deep discounts relative to actuarial value. The average markup was as low as −19 percent for annuities and −57 percent for life insurance. This extraordinary pricing behavior was due to financial and product market...

We investigate the relationship between risk taking of life-health (LH) insurers and stability of their institutional ownership within a simultaneous equation system model. Several results are obtained. First, stable institutional ownership of is associated with lower total risk of LH insurers,...

This paper assesses the impact of longevity risk management on insurer shareholder value and solvency for an annual portfolio. The analysis uses a multi-period stochastic mortality model with both systematic and idiosyncratic longevity risk. We consider both survivor, or longevity, swaps that...

The cost of capital is an important factor determining the premiums charged by life insurers issuing life annuities. Insurers will be able to offer more finely priced annuities if they can reduce this cost whilst maintaining solvency. This capital cost can be reduced by hedging longevity risk...

The cost of capital is an important factor determining the premiums charged by life insurers issuing life annuities. Insurers will be able to offer more finely priced annuities if they can reduce this cost whilst maintaining solvency. This capital cost can be reduced by hedging longevity risk...

How do private equity firms impact their portfolio companies? We study this question using comprehensive data on their investments in the life insurance industry, which grew ten-fold from $23 billion to $250 billion between 2009 and 2014. Private equity-backed insurers exhibit superior returns....

A method to hedge variable annuities in the presence of basis risk is developed. A regime-switching model is considered for the dynamics of market assets. The approach is based on a local optimization of risk and is therefore very tractable and flexible. The local optimization criterion is...

Motivated by a recent demographic study establishing a link between macroeconomic fluctuations and the mortality index kt in the Lee-Carter model, we develop a dynamic asset-liability model to assess the impact of macroeconomic fluctuations on the solvency of a life insurance company....

This paper examines how capital requirements affect life insurance companies' business growth and investment risk taking. I show through a simple model that capital requirements are negatively (positively) associated with life insurers' equilibrium business scale (average portfolio investment...

This paper studies the relationship between audit and non-audit service fees in the UK life insurance industry in the period 1999-2009. Moreover, we examine the impact of ownership structure and internal governance on the level of direct audit fees. Utilizing panel data econometric techniques,...