This research explores two aspects of European insurers' investment behaviour related to crises. While they are often considered as financial market stabilisers and long-term investors, there is currently a lack of knowledge about insurers' investment behaviour in crises under the regulatory...

This paper provides a rationale for the macro-prudential regulation of insurance companies, where capital requirements increase in their contribution to systemic risk. In the absence of systemic risk, the formal model in this paper predicts that optimal regulation may be implemented by capital...

Different insurance activities exhibit different levels of persistence of shocks and volatility. For example, life insurance is typically more persistent but less volatile than non-life insurance. We examine how diversification among life, non-life insurance, and active reinsurance business...

The purpose of this article is to value some life insurance contracts in a stochastic interest rate environment taking into account the default risk of the underlying insurance company. The participating life insurance contracts considered here can be expressed as portfolios of barrier options...

We explore the implications of ambiguity for the pricing of credit default swaps (CDSs). A model of heterogeneous investors with independent preferences for ambiguity and risk shows that, since CDS contracts are assets in zero net supply, the net credit risk exposure of the marginal investor...

We measure credit risk premia---prices for bearing corporate default risk in excess of expected default losses---using Markit CDS and Moody's Analytics EDF data. We find dramatic variation over time in credit risk premia, with peaks in 2002, during the global financial crisis of 2008-09, and in...

The topic of insolvency risk in connection with life insurance companies has recently attracted a great deal of attention. In this paper, the question is investigated of how the values of the equity and of the liability of a life insurance company are affected by the default risk and the choice...

The paper analyzes the design of participating life insurance contracts with minimum return rate guarantees. Without default risk, the insured receives the maximum of a guaranteed rate and a participation in the investment returns. With default risk, the payoff is modified by a default put...

In an attempt to transfer the loss rate risks in motor insurance to the capital market, we use the tranche technique to hedge the motor insurance risks. This paper illustrates AXA and their securitization of French motor insurance in 2005 as an example. Though this application is new, this...