Longevity risk, cost of capital and hedging for life insurers under Solvency II

Ramona Meyricke and Michael Sherris

Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, 2014, vol. 55, issue C, 147-155

Abstract: The cost of capital is an important factor determining the premiums charged by life insurers issuing life annuities. This capital cost can be reduced by hedging longevity risk with longevity swaps, a form of reinsurance. We assess the costs of longevity risk management using indemnity based longevity swaps compared to costs of holding capital under Solvency II. We show that, using a reasonable market price of longevity risk, the market cost of hedging longevity risk for earlier ages is lower than the cost of capital required under Solvency II. Longevity swaps covering higher ages, around 90 and above, have higher market hedging costs than the saving in the cost of regulatory capital. The Solvency II capital regulations for longevity risk generates an incentive for life insurers to hold longevity tail risk on their own balance sheets, rather than transferring this to the reinsurance or the capital markets. This aspect of the Solvency II capital requirements is not well understood and raises important policy issues for the management of longevity risk.

Keywords: Capital management; Solvency; Longevity risk; Reinsurance; Securitisation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: G22 G23 G32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167668714000146
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:insuma:v:55:y:2014:i:c:p:147-155

DOI: 10.1016/j.insmatheco.2014.01.010

Access Statistics for this article

Insurance: Mathematics and Economics is currently edited by R. Kaas, Hansjoerg Albrecher, M. J. Goovaerts and E. S. W. Shiu

More articles in Insurance: Mathematics and Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().