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Pricing life insurance under stochastic mortality via the instantaneous Sharpe ratio

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  • Young, Virginia R.

Abstract

We develop a pricing rule for life insurance under stochastic mortality in an incomplete market by assuming that the insurance company requires compensation for its risk in the form of a pre-specified instantaneous Sharpe ratio. Our valuation formula satisfies a number of desirable properties, many of which it shares with the standard deviation premium principle. The major result of the paper is that the price per contract solves a linear partial differential equation as the number of contracts approaches infinity. One can represent the limiting price as an expectation with respect to an equivalent martingale measure. Via this representation, one can interpret the instantaneous Sharpe ratio as a market price of mortality risk. Another important result is that if the hazard rate is stochastic, then the risk-adjusted premium is greater than the net premium, even as the number of contracts approaches infinity. Thus, the price reflects the fact that systematic mortality risk cannot be eliminated by selling more life insurance policies. We present a numerical example to illustrate our results, along with the corresponding algorithms.

Suggested Citation

  • Young, Virginia R., 2008. "Pricing life insurance under stochastic mortality via the instantaneous Sharpe ratio," Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 42(2), pages 691-703, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:insuma:v:42:y:2008:i:2:p:691-703
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Bayraktar, Erhan & Young, Virginia R., 2007. "Hedging life insurance with pure endowments," Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 40(3), pages 435-444, May.
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    6. Schrager, David F., 2006. "Affine stochastic mortality," Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 38(1), pages 81-97, February.
    7. Virginia R. Young, 2007. "Pricing Life Insurance under Stochastic Mortality via the Instantaneous Sharpe Ratio: Theorems and Proofs," Papers 0705.1297, arXiv.org.
    8. Dahl, Mikkel, 2004. "Stochastic mortality in life insurance: market reserves and mortality-linked insurance contracts," Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 35(1), pages 113-136, August.
    9. Erhan Bayraktar & Virginia Young, 2008. "Pricing options in incomplete equity markets via the instantaneous Sharpe ratio," Annals of Finance, Springer, vol. 4(4), pages 399-429, October.
    10. Ballotta, Laura & Haberman, Steven, 2006. "The fair valuation problem of guaranteed annuity options: The stochastic mortality environment case," Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 38(1), pages 195-214, February.
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    12. Milevsky, Moshe A. & David Promislow, S., 2001. "Mortality derivatives and the option to annuitise," Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 29(3), pages 299-318, December.
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    Cited by:

    1. Chen, Bingzheng & Zhang, Lihong & Zhao, Lin, 2010. "On the robustness of longevity risk pricing," Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 47(3), pages 358-373, December.
    2. Hua Chen & Michael Sherris & Tao Sun & Wenge Zhu, 2013. "Living With Ambiguity: Pricing Mortality-Linked Securities With Smooth Ambiguity Preferences," Journal of Risk & Insurance, The American Risk and Insurance Association, vol. 80(3), pages 705-732, September.
    3. Johnny Siu‐Hang Li & Andrew Cheuk‐Yin Ng, 2011. "Canonical Valuation of Mortality‐Linked Securities," Journal of Risk & Insurance, The American Risk and Insurance Association, vol. 78(4), pages 853-884, December.
    4. Marcus C. Christiansen, 2013. "Gaussian and Affine Approximation of Stochastic Diffusion Models for Interest and Mortality Rates," Risks, MDPI, vol. 1(3), pages 1-20, October.
    5. Wang, Ting & Young, Virginia R., 2016. "Hedging pure endowments with mortality derivatives," Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 238-255.
    6. Bahl, Raj Kumari & Sabanis, Sotirios, 2021. "Model-independent price bounds for Catastrophic Mortality Bonds," Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(C), pages 276-291.
    7. Huang, Rachel J. & Miao, Jerry C.Y. & Tzeng, Larry Y., 2013. "Does mortality improvement increase equity risk premiums? A risk perception perspective," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 22(C), pages 67-77.
    8. Huang, Yu-Lieh & Tsai, Jeffrey Tzuhao & Yang, Sharon S. & Cheng, Hung-Wen, 2014. "Price bounds of mortality-linked security in incomplete insurance market," Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 30-39.
    9. Zimbidis, Alexandros A., 2014. "Insurance pricing using H∞-control," Applied Mathematics and Computation, Elsevier, vol. 232(C), pages 685-697.
    10. Kung, Ko-Lun & Liu, I-Chien & Wang, Chou-Wen, 2021. "Modeling and pricing longevity derivatives using Skellam distribution," Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 99(C), pages 341-354.
    11. Ballestra, Luca Vincenzo & Ottaviani, Massimiliano & Pacelli, Graziella, 2012. "An operator splitting harmonic differential quadrature approach to solve Young’s model for life insurance risk," Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(2), pages 442-448.
    12. Li, Jing & Szimayer, Alexander, 2011. "The uncertain mortality intensity framework: Pricing and hedging unit-linked life insurance contracts," Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(3), pages 471-486.

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