We analyze the benefit to the insured of newly traded, innovative life insurance contracts. On a sequence of yearly reference days, the insured can choose between a guaranteed return (linked to the insurer's asset result) and a capped index participation. The cap is adjusted at the beginning of...

Many insurers disclose Embedded Value reports, a 'capital market-consistent' valuation framework for their life insurance business, to provide investors with additional information. We examine the incremental and relative information content of Embedded Value components in comparison to the...

We examine the impact of demutualization announcements by 13 life insurance companies during 1996-2000 on the value of existing stock-owned life insurance companies and companies in other segments of the insurance industry. Demutualization announcements are associated with negative stock price...

Does a catastrophe bond issue increase the insurance firm value to shareholders? By issuing such bonds, insurance companies that are exposed to weather claims, can share their risk with investors, managing the corporate risk. The academic literature argues that hedging activities can increase a...

Insurance securitization has long been hailed as an important tool to increase the underwriting capacity for companies exposed to catastrophe-related risks. However, global volumes of insurance securitization have remained surprisingly low to date which raises questions over its benefits. In...

The availability of many variables with predictive power makes their selection in a regression context difficult. This study considers robust and understandable low-dimensional estimators as building blocks to improve overall predictive power by optimally combining these building blocks. Our new...

We conduct a comprehensive asset pricing analysis for the U.S. property/liability insurance industry using monthly data from 1988 to 2015. We find that state-of-the-art models such as the Fama and French (2015) five-factor model cannot explain the returns of property/liability insurance stocks...

We analyze whether bond investors price tail risk exposures of financial institutions using a comprehensive sample of bond issuances by U.S. financial institutions. Although primary bond yield spreads increase with an institutions' own tail risk (expected shortfall), systematic tail risk...

Four times a year, Eurodollar futures contracts are settled by cash to a final settlement price that is tied to spot three-month LIBOR. The LIBOR used in the settlement is determined by the Chicago Mercantile Exchange after conducting two surveys of major banks on the last hour of settlement....