IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/astinb/v47y2017i03p803-836_00.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Lifelong Health Insurance Covers With Surrender Values: Updating Mechanisms In The Presence Of Medical Inflation

Author

Listed:
  • Dhaene, Jan
  • Godecharle, Els
  • Antonio, Katrien
  • Denuit, Michel
  • Hanbali, Hamza

Abstract

This paper considers the problem of a lifelong health insurance cover where medical inflation is not sufficiently incorporated in the level premium determined at policy issue. We focus on the setting where changes in health benefits, driven by medical inflation, are accounted for by an appropriate update or indexation of the level premium, the policy value, or both premium and policy value, during the term of the contract. Such an updating mechanism is necessary to restore the actuarial equivalence between future health benefits and surrender values on the one hand, and available policy values and future premiums on the other hand. We extend existing literature (Vercruysse et al., 2013; Denuit et al., 2017) by developing updating mechanisms in a discrete-time framework, where medical inflation is only taken into account ex-post as it emerges over time and where surrender values are allowed for. We propose and design two types of surrender values: based on the ageing provision on the one hand and based directly on the premiums paid until surrender on the other hand. We illustrate our updating strategy with numerical examples, using Belgian data, and investigate the sensitivity of our findings with respect to elements from the technical basis (in particular: the lapse rates) used in the actuarial calculations. Our updating mechanism is generic and useful for a wide range of products in life and health insurance, where some elements of the technical basis are guaranteed while others are subject to revision according to policy conditions.

Suggested Citation

  • Dhaene, Jan & Godecharle, Els & Antonio, Katrien & Denuit, Michel & Hanbali, Hamza, 2017. "Lifelong Health Insurance Covers With Surrender Values: Updating Mechanisms In The Presence Of Medical Inflation," ASTIN Bulletin, Cambridge University Press, vol. 47(3), pages 803-836, September.
  • Handle: RePEc:cup:astinb:v:47:y:2017:i:03:p:803-836_00
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0515036117000137/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Hanbali, Hamza & Claassens, Hubert & Denuit, Michel & Dhaene, Jan & Trufin, Julien, 2019. "Once covered, forever covered: The actuarial challenges of the Belgian private health insurance system," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 123(10), pages 970-975.
    2. Hanbali, Hamza & Denuit, Michel & Dhaene, Jan & Trufin, Julien, 2019. "A dynamic equivalence principle for systematic longevity risk management," Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 86(C), pages 158-167.

    More about this item

    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:cup:astinb:v:47:y:2017:i:03:p:803-836_00. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/asb .

    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.