IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bpj/apjrin/v10y2016i2p155-192n4.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Risk of Variable Annuity Guarantees and Life Insurer Capital

Author

Listed:
  • Baranoff Etti

    (Department of Finance, Insurance and Real Estate, Virginia Common wealth University, Richmond, VA, United States of America)

  • Sager Thomas

    (Department of Information, Risk, and Operations Management, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, United States of America)

  • Shi Bo

    (Department of Accounting and Finance, Morehead State University, Morehead, KY, United States of America)

Abstract

Recently, concerns have been raised about the systemic financial threat potentially posed by life insurers. In part, these concerns have arisen because of life insurer involvement in the sales of variable annuity products with put-like performance guarantees. Guarantees expose life insurers to the market risks of mutual funds that are directed by their policyholders. In 2007, U.S. policyholders held about $500 billion in variable annuity accounts subject to guarantees issued by insurers. In this study we examine life insurer management of the risks of these guarantees, with emphasis on management of capital buffers. We introduce actuarial/regulatory and exposure-based proxies for these risks. Surprisingly, we find a robust and paradoxical result. In the years immediately prior to the Great 2008 Recession, the assumption of additional guarantee risk was associated with reductions in capital (contradicting the finite risk hypothesis), ceteris paribus. The result survives the attempts of two regression models designed to uncover explanatory confounders. The result can inform the debate on systemic risk and capital adequacy for life insurers.

Suggested Citation

  • Baranoff Etti & Sager Thomas & Shi Bo, 2016. "The Risk of Variable Annuity Guarantees and Life Insurer Capital," Asia-Pacific Journal of Risk and Insurance, De Gruyter, vol. 10(2), pages 155-192, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:bpj:apjrin:v:10:y:2016:i:2:p:155-192:n:4
    DOI: 10.1515/apjri-2016-0001
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1515/apjri-2016-0001
    Download Restriction: For access to full text, subscription to the journal or payment for the individual article is required.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1515/apjri-2016-0001?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Etti G. Baranoff & Savas Papadopoulos & Thomas W. Sager, 2007. "Capital and Risk Revisited: A Structural Equation Model Approach for Life Insurers," Journal of Risk & Insurance, The American Risk and Insurance Association, vol. 74(3), pages 653-681, September.
    2. Bauer, Daniel & Kling, Alexander & Russ, Jochen, 2008. "A Universal Pricing Framework for Guaranteed Minimum Benefits in Variable Annuities 1," ASTIN Bulletin, Cambridge University Press, vol. 38(2), pages 621-651, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Feng, Runhuan & Huang, Huaxiong, 2016. "Statutory financial reporting for variable annuity guaranteed death benefits: Market practice, mathematical modeling and computation," Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 67(C), pages 54-64.
    2. Mahayni, Antje & Schneider, Judith C., 2012. "Variable annuities and the option to seek risk: Why should you diversify?," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 36(9), pages 2417-2428.
    3. David Landriault & Bin Li & Dongchen Li & Yumin Wang, 2021. "High‐water mark fee structure in variable annuities," Journal of Risk & Insurance, The American Risk and Insurance Association, vol. 88(4), pages 1057-1094, December.
    4. Jin Sun & Pavel V. Shevchenko & Man Chung Fung, 2017. "A note on the impact of management fees on the pricing of variable annuity guarantees," Papers 1705.03787, arXiv.org, revised May 2017.
    5. Salah Mohamed Eladly, 2024. "Asset Quality, Firm Size and Volatility of Returns of Insurance Companies in Egypt," International Journal of Business and Management, Canadian Center of Science and Education, vol. 19(6), pages 308-308, December.
    6. Steinorth, Petra & Mitchell, Olivia S., 2015. "Valuing variable annuities with guaranteed minimum lifetime withdrawal benefits," Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 64(C), pages 246-258.
    7. Christophette Blanchet-Scalliet & Etienne Chevalier & Idris Kharroubi & Thomas Lim, 2015. "Max–Min Optimization Problem For Variable Annuities Pricing," International Journal of Theoretical and Applied Finance (IJTAF), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 18(08), pages 1-35, December.
    8. Jiang, Ruihong & Saunders, David & Weng, Chengguo, 2023. "Two-phase selection of representative contracts for valuation of large variable annuity portfolios," Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 113(C), pages 293-309.
    9. Ulm, Eric, 2018. "The effect of retirement taxation rules on the value of guaranteed lifetime withdrawal benefits," Working Paper Series 20829, Victoria University of Wellington, School of Economics and Finance.
    10. Jin Sun & Eckhard Platen, 2019. "Benchmarked Risk Minimizing Hedging Strategies for Life Insurance Policies," Research Paper Series 399, Quantitative Finance Research Centre, University of Technology, Sydney.
    11. Nguyen, Hang & Sherris, Michael & Villegas, Andrés M. & Ziveyi, Jonathan, 2024. "Scenario selection with LASSO regression for the valuation of variable annuity portfolios," Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 116(C), pages 27-43.
    12. Wang, Gu & Zou, Bin, 2021. "Optimal fee structure of variable annuities," Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 101(PB), pages 587-601.
    13. Yang, Yang & Chen, Shaoying & Cui, Zhenyu & Zhang, Zhimin, 2024. "Valuation of guaranteed lifelong withdrawal benefit with the long-term care option," Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 119(C), pages 179-193.
    14. Thorsten Moenig, 2021. "Efficient valuation of variable annuity portfolios with dynamic programming," Journal of Risk & Insurance, The American Risk and Insurance Association, vol. 88(4), pages 1023-1055, December.
    15. Alexandre Carbonneau, 2020. "Deep Hedging of Long-Term Financial Derivatives," Papers 2007.15128, arXiv.org.
    16. Hyndman, Cody B. & Wenger, Menachem, 2014. "Valuation perspectives and decompositions for variable annuities with GMWB riders," Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 283-290.
    17. Milevsky, Moshe A. & Salisbury, Thomas S., 2022. "Refundable income annuities: Feasibility of money-back guarantees," Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 105(C), pages 175-193.
    18. Jiang Cheng & Mary A. Weiss, 2011. "The Regulatory Effect of Risk-Based Capital in Property-Liability Insurance," NFI Working Papers 2011-WP-20, Indiana State University, Scott College of Business, Networks Financial Institute.
    19. Selim Mankaï & Aymen Belgacem, 2013. "Interactions Between Risk-Taking, Capital, and Reinsurance for Property-Liability Insurance Firms," EconomiX Working Papers 2013-23, University of Paris Nanterre, EconomiX.
    20. Zhou, Jiang & Wu, Lan, 2015. "Valuing equity-linked death benefits with a threshold expense strategy," Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 79-90.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bpj:apjrin:v:10:y:2016:i:2:p:155-192:n:4. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Peter Golla (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.degruyterbrill.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.