The Chicago Board of Options Exchange (CBOE) advocates linking variable annuity (VA) fees to its trademark VIX index in a white paper (CBOE, 2013a, b). It claims that the VIX-linked fee structure has several advantages over the traditional fixed percentage fee structure. However, the evidence...

In this paper, we study the fair fee of a flexible premium variable annuity (FPVA), in which the policyholder can choose to pay periodic premiums during the accumulation phase instead of a single initial premium. We are able to express fair fees using a fast and accurate approximation based on...