Integrating optimal annuity planning with consumption-investment selections in retirement planning

Annuities can be effective tools in managing longevity risk in retirement planning. This paper develops a framework that merges annuity purchase decisions with consumption-investment selections in retirement planning. After introducing a pricing and a benefit payment model for an annuity, we construct a multi-period wealth evolution model. An optimization problem is formulated with an objective of maximizing lifetime utility of consumption and wealth. Optimal decisions are determined as a trade off between consumption and investment among an annuity, a risky and a risk-free asset. Computational results are provided to illustrate the practical implications of the framework.     

Optimal management of DC pension plan in a stochastic interest rate and stochastic volatility framework

This paper investigates an optimal investment strategy of DC pension plan in a stochastic interest rate and stochastic volatility framework. We apply an affine model including the Cox–Ingersoll–Ross (CIR) model and the Vasicek mode to characterize the interest rate while the stock price is given by the Heston’s stochastic volatility (SV) model. The pension manager can invest in cash, bond and stock in the financial market. Thus, the wealth of the pension fund is influenced by the financial risks in the market and the stochastic contribution from the fund participant. The goal of the fund manager is, coping with the contribution rate, to maximize the expectation of the constant relative risk aversion (CRRA) utility of the terminal value of the pension fund over a guarantee which serves as an annuity after retirement. We first transform the problem into a single investment problem, then derive an explicit solution via the stochastic programming method. Finally, the numerical analysis is given to show the impact of financial parameters on the optimal strategies.     

求解美式回望期权的有限元方法

期权作为一种金融衍生产品,在欧美国家一直很受欢迎.由于其规避风险的特性,期权也吸引了中国投资者的兴趣.基于市场的需求,2015年初,上海证券交易所推出了中国首批期权产品,期权定价问题的研究热潮正席卷全球.本文研究的美式回望期权,是一种路径相关的期权,其支付函数不仅依赖于标的资产的现值,也依赖其历史最值.分析回望期权的特点,不难发现:1)这类期权空间变量的变化范围为二维无界不规则区域,难以应用数值方法直接求解;2)最佳实施边界未知,使得该问题变得高度非线性.本文的主要工作就是解决这两个困难,得到回望期权和最佳实施边界的数值逼近结果.现有的处理问题1)的有效方法是采用标准变量替换、计价单位变换以及Landau变换将定价模型化为一个[0,1]区间上的非线性抛物问题,本文也将沿用这些技巧处理问题1).进一步,采用有限元方法离散简化后的定价模型,并论证了数值解的非负性,提出了利用Newton法求解离散化的非线性系统.最后,通过数值模拟,验证了本文所提算法的高效性和准确性.     

Valuation of guaranteed annuity options using a stochastic volatility model for equity prices

Guaranteed annuity options are options providing the right to convert a policyholder’s accumulated funds to a life annuity at a fixed rate when the policy matures. These options were a common feature in UK retirement savings contracts issued in the 1970’s and 1980’s when interest rates were high, but caused problems for insurers as the interest rates began to fall in the 1990’s. Currently, these options are frequently sold in the US and Japan as part of variable annuity products. The last decade the literature on pricing and risk management of these options evolved. Until now, for pricing these options generally a geometric Brownian motion for equity prices is assumed. However, given the long maturities of the insurance contracts a stochastic volatility model for equity prices would be more suitable. In this paper explicit expressions are derived for prices of guaranteed annuity options assuming stochastic volatility for equity prices and either a 1-factor or 2-factor Gaussian interest rate model. The results indicate that the impact of ignoring stochastic volatility can be significant.     

障碍期权推广到几何平均资产情况下的定价公式

平均期权是亚式期权,其到期收益依赖于某个形式的整个期权有效期内或是其一部分时段内标的资产的平均价格.障碍期权指的是期权是否有效或是否执行决定于标的资产价格在期权有效期内是否碰上障碍.本文主要讨论几何平均资产在期权有效期内设有障碍的期权定价公式,并运用反射原理和回望期权的方法来推导出期权的定价公式.     

Valuation of guaranteed minimum maturity benefits in variable annuities with surrender options

We present a numerical approach to the pricing of guaranteed minimum maturity benefits embedded in variable annuity contracts in the case where the guarantees can be surrendered at any time prior to maturity that improves on current approaches. Surrender charges are important in practice and are imposed as a way of discouraging early termination of variable annuity contracts. We formulate the valuation framework and focus on the surrender option as an American put option pricing problem and derive the corresponding pricing partial differential equation by using hedging arguments and Itô’s Lemma. Given the underlying stochastic evolution of the fund, we also present the associated transition density partial differential equation allowing us to develop solutions. An explicit integral expression for the pricing partial differential equation is then presented with the aid of Duhamel’s principle. Our analysis is relevant to risk management applications since we derive an expression of the delta for the sensitivity analysis of the guarantee fees with respect to changes in the underlying fund value. We provide algorithms for implementing the integral expressions for the price, the corresponding early exercise boundary and the delta of the surrender option. We quantify and assess the sensitivity of the prices, early exercise boundaries and deltas to changes in the underlying variables including an analysis of the fair insurance fees.     

基于退休金保险的期权定价

本文引入一种基于退休年金的欧式看涨期权 ,它赋予合约持有者在退休年龄或其它年龄以某一约定的价格 (执行价格 )购买一份退休年金受益的机会 .通过建立相关的精算模型对一些特定情形的定价进行了阐述 ,并与传统的退休金合约进行了比较     

基于通货膨胀和最低保障的DC养老金最优投资

主要研究了通货膨胀和最低保障下的DC养老金的最优投资问题。 首先, 应用伊藤公式得到通胀折现后真实股票价格的微分方程。 然后, 在DC养老金终端财富外部保障约束下, 引入欧式看涨期权, 考虑随机通胀环境下的退休时刻终端财富期望效用最大化问题, 应用鞅方法推导退休时刻以及退休前任意时刻DC养老金最优投资策略的显式解。 最后, 应用蒙特卡洛方法对结果进行数值分析, 分析最低保障对DC养老金最优投资策略的影响。     

A semi-analytic pricing formula for lookback options under a general stochastic volatility model

In general, the pricing problems of exotic options in finance do not have analytic solutions under stochastic volatility and so it is hard to compute the option prices or at least it requires much of time to compute them. This paper investigates a semi-analytic pricing method for lookback options in a general stochastic volatility framework. The resultant formula is well connected to the Black–Scholes price that is the first term of a series expansion, which makes computing the option prices relatively efficient. Further, a convergence condition for the expansion is provided with an error bound.     

Equilibrium pricing bounds on option prices

We consider the problem of valuing European options in a complete market but with incomplete data. Typically, when the underlying asset dynamics is not specified, the martingale probability measure is unknown. Given a consensus on the actual distribution of the underlying price at maturity, we derive an upper bound on the call option price by putting two kinds of restrictions on the pricing probability measure. First, we put a restriction on the second risk-neutral moment of the underlying asset terminal value. Second, from equilibrium pricing arguments one can put a monotonicity restriction on the Radon-Nikodym density of the pricing probability with respect to the true probability measure. This density is restricted to be a nonincreasing function of the underlying price at maturity. The bound appears then as the solution of a constrained optimization problem and we adopt a duality approach to solve it. Explicit bounds are provided for the call option. Finally, we provide a numerical example.     

Pricing and Hedging of Lookback Options in Hyper-exponential Jump Diffusion Models

ABSTRACT

In this article, we consider the problem of pricing lookback options in certain exponential Lévy market models. While in the classic Black-Scholes models the price of such options can be calculated in closed form, for more general asset price model, one typically has to rely on (rather time-intense) Monte-Carlo or partial (integro)-differential equation (P(I)DE) methods. However, for Lévy processes with double exponentially distributed jumps, the lookback option price can be expressed as one-dimensional Laplace transform (cf. Kou, S. G., Petrella, G., & Wang, H. (2005). Pricing path-dependent options with jump risk via Laplace transforms. The Kyoto Economic Review, 74(9), 1–23.). The key ingredient to derive this representation is the explicit availability of the first passage time distribution for this particular Lévy process, which is well-known also for the more general class of hyper-exponential jump diffusions (HEJDs). In fact, Jeannin and Pistorius (Jeannin, M., & Pistorius, M. (2010). A transform approach to calculate prices and Greeks of barrier options driven by a class of Lévy processes. Quntitative Finance, 10(6), 629–644.) were able to derive formulae for the Laplace transformed price of certain barrier options in market models described by HEJD processes. Here, we similarly derive the Laplace transforms of floating and fixed strike lookback option prices and propose a numerical inversion scheme, which allows, like Fourier inversion methods for European vanilla options, the calculation of lookback options with different strikes in one shot. Additionally, we give semi-analytical formulae for several Greeks of the option price and discuss a method of extending the proposed method to generalized hyper-exponential (as e.g. NIG or CGMY) models by fitting a suitable HEJD process. Finally, we illustrate the theoretical findings by some numerical experiments.     

NUMERICAL ANALYSIS ON BINOMIAL TREE METHODS FOR AMERICAN LOOKBACK OPTIONS

1　IntroductionLookback options are path-dependent options whose payoffs depend on the maximumor the minimum of the underlying asset price during the life of the options( see[6] [1 0 ][1 4] ) .Here the maximum or minimum realized asset price may be monitored either con-tinuously or discretely.An American lookback call( put) option allows to be exercised atany time prior to expiry and gives the holder the rightto buy( sell) atthe historical mini-mum( maximum) of the underlying asset price on ex…     

Valuation of the interest rate guarantee embedded in defined contribution pension plans

In this research, we derive the valuation formulae for a defined contribution pension plan associated with the minimum rate of return guarantees. Different from the previous studies, we work on the rate of return guarantee which is linked to the δ-year spot rate. The payoffs of interest rate guarantees can be viewed as a function of the exchange option. By employing Margrabe’s [Margrabe, W., 1978. The value of an option to exchange one asset for another. Journal of Finance 33, 177–186] option pricing approach, we derive general pricing formulae under the assumptions that the interest rate dynamics follow a single-factor HJM (1992) [Heath. D. et al., 1992. Bond pricing and the term structure of interest rates: a new methodology for contingent claims valuation. Econometrica 60, 77–105] interest rate model and the asset prices follow a geometric Brownian motion. The volatility of the forward rates is assumed to be exponentially decaying. The formula is explicit for valuing maturity guarantee (type-I guarantee). For multi-period guarantee (type-II guarantee), the analytical formula only exists when the guaranteed rate is the one-year spot rate. The accuracy of the valuation formulae is illustrated with numerical analysis. We also investigate the effect of mortality and the sensitivity of key parameters on the value of the guarantee. We find that type-II guarantee is much more costly than the type-I guarantee, especially with a long duration policy. The closed form solution provides the advantage in valuing pension guarantees.     

Comparison of optimal portfolios with and without subsistence consumption constraints

We present the effects of the subsistence consumption constraints on a portfolio selection problem for an agent who is free to choose when to retire with a constant relative risk aversion (CRRA) utility function. By comparing the previous studies with and without the constraints expressed by the minimum consumption requirement, the changes of a retirement wealth level and the amount of money invested in the risky asset are derived explicitly. As a result, the subsistence constraints always lead to lower retirement wealth level but do not always induce less investment in the risky asset. This implies that even though the agent who has a restriction on consumption retires with lower wealth level, she invests more money near the retirement when her risk aversion lies inside a certain range.     

An FFT Approach to Price Guaranteed Minimum Death Benefit in Variable Annuities under a Regime-Switching Model

This paper considers the valuation of guaranteed minimum death benefit in variable annuities under a regime-switching model. More specifically, the risk-free interest rate, the appreciation rate and the volatility of the reference investment fund are modulated by a continuous-time, finite-state, observable Markov chain. A regime-switching Esscher transform is adopted to select an equivalent martingale measure in the incomplete financial market. Inverse Fourier transform is used to derive an analytical pricing formula for the embedded option in variable annuity with guaranteed minimum death benefit. To calculate the fair guarantee charge, fast Fourier transform approach is applied. Numerical examples are provided to illustrate the practical implementation and the relationship between the fair guarantee charges and other parameters.     

幂型支付的欧式期权定价公式

在等价鞅测度框架下,讨论了(在到期时刻)期权处于实值状态时支付函数为幂型的股票欧式期权定价公式.这里我们假设无风险利率,股票预期收益率和股价波动率都是时间的确定性函数.本文结果不但包含了原始的Black-Scholes公式,而且可用于上封顶与下保底(幂型)欧式看涨期权的定价.     

Binary option pricing using fuzzy numbers

A binary option is a type of option where the payout is either fixed after the underlying stock exceeds the predetermined threshold (or strike price) or is nothing at all. Traditional option pricing models determine the option’s expected return without taking into account the uncertainty associated with the underlying asset price at maturity. Fuzzy set theory can be used to explicitly account for such uncertainty. Here we use fuzzy set theory to price binary options. Specifically, we study binary options by fuzzifying the maturity value of the stock price using trapezoidal, parabolic and adaptive fuzzy numbers.     

随机环境下具有最低担保约束的DC养老金鲁棒投资策略

针对近年来养老金管理遇到的问题,基于模型不确定性,考虑随机环境和退休保障限制的DC型养老金最优投资策略具有重要意义.以养老金的最终价值相对于退休后年金担保的不变相对风险厌恶期望效用最大化为目标,利用随机动态规划的方法,求出鲁棒最优投资策略及相应的价值函数.最后,通过数值分析,得到各参数对最优投资策略的影响.     

Indifference pricing for CRRA utilities

We study utility indifference pricing of claim streams with intertemporal consumption and constant relative risk aversion utilities. We derive explicit formulas for the derivatives of the utility indifference price with respect to claims and wealth. The elegant structure of these formulas is a reflection of surprising algebraic identities for the derivatives of the optimal consumption stream. Namely, the partial derivative of the optimal consumption stream with respect to the endowment is always a projection. Furthermore, it is an orthogonal projection with respect to a natural “economic inner product”. These algebraic identities generate cancellations between the terms entering derivatives of the indifference price and allow us to prove sharp global bounds for the indifference price that become exact when the claims to wealth ratio is large and risk aversion is between one and two. For general risk aversion, we show that, in the large claims to wealth ratio limit, the asymptotic expansion of the indifference price is given in terms of fractional powers of the wealth, depending on risk aversion. When risk aversion is equal to one, the fractional power depends on the underlying claim.