Valuation and optimization of contracts on the secondary insurance market

Joanna Dębicka and Stanisław Heilpern
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Joanna Dębicka: Uniwersytet Ekonomiczny we Wrocławiu, Wydział Zarządzania, Informatyki i Finansów, Katedra Statystyki
Stanisław Heilpern: Uniwersytet Ekonomiczny we Wrocławiu, Wydział Zarządzania, Informatyki i Finansów, Katedra Statystyki

Collegium of Economic Analysis Annals, 2018, issue 51, 37-62

Abstract: For an insured person who needs money because of suffering from a terminal illness that requires costly diagnosis and treatment, the easiest way of receiving money from life insurance is to withdraw from the contract of insurance. Then the insurer is obliged to pay the surrender value of policy. It appears that there is another possibility for the insured to receive prior financial gratification from life insurance. The insured can sell his policy on the secondary market of life insurance (the viatical market). In such a situation he obtains an amount that is greater than the surrender value (and less than the death benefit). Then the viatical company takes a fee for the insurance premiums, and in case of death of the insured gets the death benefits. Such agreements to resell the rights to death benefits are offered to people who have become terminally ill (viatical settlement). The aim of the paper is twofold. Firstly, we study the influence of the moment of falling ill (compared to the age and sex of the insured and duration of insurance) on the viatical settlemen payments and expected profit of the viatical company. For this purpose, we apply the methodology used by insurance companies in the valuation of the contract. Secondly, we analyse the problem of optimizing the viatical settlement from the point of view of the insured. It will consist in determining the amount of the nominal value of the benefit (the whole or a part) which the insured intends to sell in such a way that the amount of benefits (derived from a viatical settlement and the insurance contract) and premiums maximize the average amount of funds available to the insured. We use various approaches of the insured to risk find an optimal solution, which also allows to take different kinds of human behaviour in risky conditions into consideration. All numerical examples were made on the assumption that the insured person has the endowment insurance and he would like to resale rights to the benefit because he fell ill with lung cancer.

Keywords: viatical market; life insurance; multistate model; Bernoulli principle; Rank Dependent Utility Theory; Cumulative Prospect Theory (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
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