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An analytical study of participating policies with minimum rate guarantee and surrender option

Author

Listed:
  • Maria B. Chiarolla

    (Università del Salento)

  • Tiziano Angelis

    (University of Turin
    Collegio Carlo Alberto)

  • Gabriele Stabile

    (Sapienza-Università di Roma)

Abstract

We perform a detailed theoretical study of the value of a class of participating policies with four key features: (i) the policyholder is guaranteed a minimum interest rate on the policy reserve; (ii) the contract can be terminated by the holder at any time until maturity (surrender option); (iii) at the maturity (or upon surrender), a bonus is credited to the holder if the portfolio backing the policy outperforms the current policy reserve; (iv) due to solvency requirements, the contract ends if the value of the underlying portfolio of assets falls below the policy reserve. Our analysis is probabilistic and relies on optimal stopping and free boundary theory. We find a structure of the optimal surrender strategy which was undetected by previous (mostly numerical) studies on the topic. Optimal surrender of the contract is triggered by two ‘stop-loss’ boundaries and by a ‘too-good-to-persist’ boundary (in the language of Ekström and Vaicenavicius in Stoch. Process. Appl. 130: 806–823, 2020). Financial implications of this strategy are discussed in detail and supported by extensive numerical experiments.

Suggested Citation

  • Maria B. Chiarolla & Tiziano Angelis & Gabriele Stabile, 2022. "An analytical study of participating policies with minimum rate guarantee and surrender option," Finance and Stochastics, Springer, vol. 26(2), pages 173-216, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:finsto:v:26:y:2022:i:2:d:10.1007_s00780-022-00471-0
    DOI: 10.1007/s00780-022-00471-0
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    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Chi Chiu Chu & Yue Kuen Kwok, 2006. "Pricing Participating Policies With Rate Guarantees," International Journal of Theoretical and Applied Finance (IJTAF), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 9(04), pages 517-532.
    2. Gabriele Stabile, 2006. "Optimal Timing Of The Annuity Purchase: Combined Stochastic Control And Optimal Stopping Problem," International Journal of Theoretical and Applied Finance (IJTAF), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 9(02), pages 151-170.
    3. Tiziano Angelis & Gabriele Stabile, 2019. "On the free boundary of an annuity purchase," Finance and Stochastics, Springer, vol. 23(1), pages 97-137, January.
    4. Ekström, Erik & Vaicenavicius, Juozas, 2020. "Optimal stopping of a Brownian bridge with an unknown pinning point," Stochastic Processes and their Applications, Elsevier, vol. 130(2), pages 806-823.
    5. Grosen, Anders & Lochte Jorgensen, Peter, 2000. "Fair valuation of life insurance liabilities: The impact of interest rate guarantees, surrender options, and bonus policies," Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 26(1), pages 37-57, February.
    6. Nelson, Daniel B & Ramaswamy, Krishna, 1990. "Simple Binomial Processes as Diffusion Approximations in Financial Models," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 3(3), pages 393-430.
    7. Anna Rita Bacinello, 2003. "Fair Valuation of a Guaranteed Life Insurance Participating Contract Embedding a Surrender Option," Journal of Risk & Insurance, The American Risk and Insurance Association, vol. 70(3), pages 461-487, September.
    8. Fard, Farzad Alavi & Siu, Tak Kuen, 2013. "Pricing participating products with Markov-modulated jump–diffusion process: An efficient numerical PIDE approach," Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(3), pages 712-721.
    9. Tiziano De Angelis & Yerkin Kitapbayev, 2018. "On the Optimal Exercise Boundaries of Swing Put Options," Mathematics of Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 43(1), pages 252-274, February.
    10. Siu, Tak Kuen, 2005. "Fair valuation of participating policies with surrender options and regime switching," Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 37(3), pages 533-552, December.
    11. Nolte, Sven & Schneider, Judith C., 2017. "Don’t lapse into temptation: a behavioral explanation for policy surrender," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 79(C), pages 12-27.
    12. Cheng, Chunli & Li, Jing, 2018. "Early default risk and surrender risk: Impacts on participating life insurance policies," Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 78(C), pages 30-43.
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    Cited by:

    1. Tiziano De Angelis, 2020. "Stopping spikes, continuation bays and other features of optimal stopping with finite-time horizon," Papers 2009.01276, arXiv.org, revised Jan 2022.
    2. Anne Mackay & Marie-Claude Vachon, 2023. "On an Optimal Stopping Problem with a Discontinuous Reward," Papers 2311.03538, arXiv.org, revised Nov 2023.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Participating policies; Minimum rate guarantee; Surrender option; Solvency requirement; Optimal stopping; Free-boundary problems; Stop-loss boundary; Too-good-to-persist boundary;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G22 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Insurance; Insurance Companies; Actuarial Studies

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