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Actuarial fairness and solidarity in pooled annuity funds

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  • Catherine Donnelly

Abstract

Various types of structures that enable a group of individuals to pool their mortality risk have been proposed in the literature. Collectively, the structures are called pooled annuity funds. Since the pooled annuity funds propose different methods of pooling mortality risk, we investigate the connections between them and find that they are genuinely different for a finite heterogeneous membership profile. We discuss the importance of actuarial fairness, defined as the expected benefits equalling the contributions for each member, in the context of pooling mortality risk and comment on whether actuarial unfairness can be seen as solidarity between members. We show that, with a finite number of members in the fund, the group self-annuitization scheme is not actuarially fair: some members subsidize the other members. The implication is that the members who are subsidizing the others may obtain a higher expected benefit by joining a fund with a more favourable membership profile. However, we find that the subsidies are financially significant only for very small or highly heterogeneous membership profiles.

Suggested Citation

  • Catherine Donnelly, 2013. "Actuarial fairness and solidarity in pooled annuity funds," Papers 1311.5120, arXiv.org, revised Jul 2014.
    • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:1311.5120
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. John Piggott & Emiliano A. Valdez & Bettina Detzel, 2005. "The Simple Analytics of a Pooled Annuity Fund," Journal of Risk & Insurance, The American Risk and Insurance Association, vol. 72(3), pages 497-520, September.
    2. Hanewald, Katja & Piggott, John & Sherris, Michael, 2013. "Individual post-retirement longevity risk management under systematic mortality risk," Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(1), pages 87-97.
    3. Catherine Donnelly, 2011. "Quantifying mortality risk in small defined-benefit pension schemes," Papers 1107.1380, arXiv.org, revised Nov 2011.
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    Cited by:

    1. Shuanglan Li & Héloïse Labit Hardy & Michael Sherris & Andrés M. Villegas, 2022. "A Managed Volatility Investment Strategy for Pooled Annuity Products," Risks, MDPI, vol. 10(6), pages 1-30, June.

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