Valuing guaranteed equity-linked contracts under piecewise constant forces of mortality

The work of this paper is motivated by the study in Gerber et al. (2012) and some following papers, in which equity-linked death benefits embedded in various variable annuity products are valuated for any time-until-death random variables whose density function can be approximated by a linear combination of densities of exponential random variables. Their analysis is made for the case where the time-until-death is exponentially distributed, i.e., under the assumption of a constant force of mortality. The main purpose of our study is to show that the discounted density approach can also be used to obtain similar explicit results on life-contingent options under the assumption of piecewise constant forces of mortality. Moreover, we study a term insurance product with the payoff at the time of death being equity-linked and inflation-indexed, and investigate two types of annuity-immediate products whose annual payments are equity-indexed with a minimum guaranteed amount. We also illustrate approximations and numerical calculations for some results obtained in this paper, and analyze parameter sensitivities.     

Valuation of variable annuities with guaranteed minimum withdrawal and death benefits via stochastic control optimization

In this paper we present a numerical valuation of variable annuities with combined Guaranteed Minimum Withdrawal Benefit (GMWB) and Guaranteed Minimum Death Benefit (GMDB) under optimal policyholder behavior solved as an optimal stochastic control problem. This product simultaneously deals with financial risk, mortality risk and human behavior. We assume that market is complete in financial risk and mortality risk is completely diversified by selling enough policies and thus the annuity price can be expressed as appropriate expectation. The computing engine employed to solve the optimal stochastic control problem is based on a robust and efficient Gauss–Hermite quadrature method with cubic spline. We present results for three different types of death benefit and show that, under the optimal policyholder behavior, adding the premium for the death benefit on top of the GMWB can be problematic for contracts with long maturities if the continuous fee structure is kept, which is ordinarily assumed for a GMWB contract. In fact for some long maturities it can be shown that the fee cannot be charged as any proportion of the account value — there is no solution to match the initial premium with the fair annuity price. On the other hand, the extra fee due to adding the death benefit can be charged upfront or in periodic installment of fixed amount, and it is cheaper than buying a separate life insurance.     

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.     

Valuing inflation-linked death benefits under a stochastic volatility framework

In this paper we construct a framework to price the inflation-linked derivatives with the stochastic inflation rate, the stochastic interest rate, and stochastic risky assets with stochastic volatility. Because of the popularity of the guaranteed minimum death benefit (GMDB) in insurance market, we mainly study two types of GMDBs: the inflation guarantee and the combination guarantee. We consider the guaranteed minimum death benefit as an European option with a random maturity date, the closed-form pricing formulas for the GMDBs are derived by Fourier-based method. Moreover, we give an elaborate sensitivity analysis to explain economical behaviors of our models. The numerical results show that the death benefit of inflation guarantee is slightly overpriced in constant volatility of stock situation.