The industrialized world experiences a demographic shift that is straining public pension systems. Employer-sponsored pension plans change from defined benefit to defined contribution. More emphasis is put on individually managed retirement funds. One concern with this movement is the potential...

Insurance guarantee schemes (IGSs) aim to protect policyholders from the costs of insurer insolvencies. However, IGSs can also reduce the incentives of insurers to conduct appropriate risk management. We investigate the risk-taking behavior of a stock insurer under insurance guarantee schemes...

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....

A life care annuity is a bundled insurance product comprised of a life annuity and long-term care insurance. Some recent studies find the two risks - longevity risk and long-term care risk - to be opposing and thus life care annuities advantageous in regard to pooling the two risks. Based on...

This paper investigates the question of how risk management should be embedded in a financial firm's hierarchy. We take an innovative approach to answering this question by combining capital market theory with game-theoretic thinking. We develop a theory for the integration of risk management --...

Life insurers sell savings contracts with surrender options, which allow policyholders to prematurely receive guaranteed surrender values. These surrender options move toward the money when interest rates rise. Hence, higher interest rates raise surrender rates, as we document empirically by...

Life insurers sell savings contracts with surrender options, which allow policyholders to prematurely receive guaranteed surrender values. These surrender options move toward the money when interest rates rise. Hence, higher interest rates raise surrender rates, as we document empirically by...

This paper documents the extension of the system-wide stress testing framework of the ECB with the insurance sector for a more thorough assessment of risks to financial stability. The special nature of insurers is captured by the modelling of the liability side and its loss absorbing capacity of...