Research examines GMIB and reset options in variable annuities.
problem Understanding the value and rationality of GMIB and reset options.
method Exploration of various parameters affecting GMIB value and calculation of critical future interest rates for reset option rationality.
result Insight into how future market performance and interest rates influence policyholder and insurer actions.
Optimal student loan repayment strategies vary based on loan size.
problem Finding the most cost-effective repayment strategy for federal student loans.
method Analyzing the impact of different repayment strategies on total cost for varying loan sizes.
result Optimal repayment strategies depend on the loan balance, with different approaches for small, large, and intermediate balances.
The Australian Government uses the means-test as a way of managing the pension budget. Changes in Age Pension policy impose difficulties in retirement modelling due to policy risk, but any major changes tend to be `grandfathered' meaning that current retirees are exempt from the new changes. In 2015, two important chan…
We construct a binomial model for a guaranteed minimum withdrawal benefit (GMWB) rider to a variable annuity (VA) under optimal policyholder behaviour. The binomial model results in explicitly formulated perfect hedging strategies funded using only periodic fee income. We consider the separate perspectives of the insur…
In this paper, we study the price of Variable Annuity Guarantees, especially of Guaranteed Annuity Options (GAO) and Guaranteed Minimum Income Benefit (GMIB), and this in the settings of a derivative pricing model where the underlying spot (the fund) is locally governed by a geometric Brownian motion with local volatil…
In this paper we present a numerical valuation of variable annuities with combined Guaranteed Minimum Withdrawal Benefit (GMWB) and Guaranteed Minimum Death Benefit (GMDB) under optimal policyholder behaviour solved as an optimal stochastic control problem. This product simultaneously deals with financial risk, mortali…
The purpose of this article is twofold. First, we motivate the need for a new type of stand-alone retirement income insurance product that would help individuals protect against personal longevity risk and possible "retirement ruin" in an economically efficient manner. We label this product a ruin-contingent life annui…
The paper explores how to fairly share longevity risk among participants of tontine schemes.
problem Fair distribution of longevity risk among participants with varying wealth and health.
method Develops a modeling framework for sharing benefits among survivors in tontine schemes.
result There are multiple ways to share longevity risk, depending on social cohesion.
In this paper we explore an identity in distribution of hitting times of a finite variation process (Yor's process) and a diffusion process (geometric Brownian motion with affine drift), which arise from various applications in financial mathematics. As a result, we provide analytical solutions to the fair charge of va…
In a recent work (Chattopadhyay, A. K. et al, Europhys. Lett. {\bf 91}, 58003, 2010) based on food consumption statistics, we showed how a stochastic agent based model could represent the time variation of the income distribution statistics in a developing economy, thereby defining an alternative \enquote{poverty index…
Refundable income annuities offer a money-back guarantee, now the majority of sales.
problem The complexity and market neglect of refundable income annuities.
method Explained the pricing, duration, and money's-worth-ratio of refundable IAs, proving a counterintuitive price behavior.
result The market price of cash-refund IAs is not a declining function of age, and older buyers might pay more than younger ones.
A large collection of financial contracts offering guaranteed minimum benefits are often posed as control problems, in which at any point in the solution domain, a control is able to take any one of an uncountable number of values from the admissible set. Often, such contracts specify that the holder exert control at a…
Paper assesses GMMB in VAs using FST for accurate net liability calculations.
problem Risk management of GMMB under stochastic mortality and regime-switching.
method Net liability model with FST algorithm for accurate numeric solutions.
result FST algorithm provides reliable results for net liability of GMMB.
Study optimizes pension scheme risk-sharing for longevity bonds.
problem Managing longevity basis risk in pension schemes with income-drawdown guarantees.
method Stochastic optimal control, dynamic programming, HJB equations.
result Sharing longevity risk increases both manager and member utilities.
We propose a sampling scheme suitable for reducing a data set prior to selecting a hypothesis with minimum empirical risk. The sampling only considers a subset of the ultimate (unknown) hypothesis set, but can nonetheless guarantee that the final excess risk will compare favorably with utilizing the entire original dat…
One shirt size cannot fit everybody, while we cannot make a unique shirt that fits perfectly for everyone because of resource limitation. This analogy is true for the policy making. Policy makers cannot establish a single policy to solve all problems for all regions because each region has its own unique issue. In the …
This paper proposes a market consistent valuation framework for variable annuities with guaranteed minimum accumulation benefit, death benefit and surrender benefit features. The setup is based on a hybrid model for the financial market and uses time-inhomogeneous Lévy processes as risk drivers. Further, we allow for d…
Investigates how FDI and R&D affect host countries' growth.
problem Host countries may fall into a middle-income trap if they focus solely on FDI.
method Optimal growth model with FDI and R&D.
result R&D investment is crucial for sustained growth in host countries.
Study explores how labour income impacts optimal bankruptcy strategy.
problem Optimal bankruptcy strategy for agents with varying labour income.
method Solved analytically using the duality method, analyzed sensitivity to cost and benefit parameters.
result Introducing labour income affects optimal strategies, revealing new insights.
Investigates optimal withdrawal strategies in VA contracts with tax and ratchet mechanisms.
problem Optimizing withdrawal strategies and behavior of policyholders in VA contracts with tax and ratchet mechanisms.
method Solving a backward dynamic programming problem to optimize cash flows from VA contracts, considering hybrid products and taxation effects.
result Tax-shielding effect of the cash fund enhances contract attractiveness, ratchet mechanism discourages early surrender, and cash fund discourages active withdrawals.
Study shows income inequality increases with city size, affecting only the wealthiest deciles.
problem Understanding income inequality in urban areas.
method Urban scaling analysis of total income scaling in population percentiles.
result Income in the poorest decile does not increase with city size, while the wealthiest deciles show superlinear scaling.
Study examines time-varying betas and their volatility in bank interest income and expense margins.
problem Understanding the variability of bank betas and their impact on net interest margins.
method Used state-space methods to estimate time-varying betas and conditional volatility.
result Substantial variation in interest income and expense betas, leading to varying net interest margin coefficients.
Variable annuities (VA) are popular insurance products. VAs provides the insured with a guaranteed accumulation rate on their premium at maturity. In addition, the insured may receive extra benefit if returns of underlying funds are high enough. Here we consider a special case of VA with high-water mark feature and Gua…
This work presents an empirical study of the evolution of the personal income distribution in Brazil. Yearly samples available from 1978 to 2005 were studied and evidence was found that the complementary cumulative distribution of personal income for 99% of the economically less favorable population is well represented…
Study finds actuarial unfairness in China's pension system, proposing income-dependent annuitization rules.
problem Actuarial fairness in China's NDC pension system when mortality differs across income groups.
method Developed a mortality-differentiated Lee-Carter framework with group-specific baseline mortality schedules and a common period effect, estimated using national and subgroup data.
result Substantial actuarial unfairness in the current age-only divisor, with a reverse transfer from poorer to richer retirees.
Minimum Description Length prevents overfitting in noisy data.
problem Learning from noisy data with overfitting risk.
method Minimum Description Length learning rule with tempered guarantees.
result Tempered agnostic finite sample learning guarantees and asymptotic behavior characterization.
A variable annuity contract with Guaranteed Minimum Withdrawal Benefit (GMWB) promises to return the entire initial investment through cash withdrawals during the policy life plus the remaining account balance at maturity, regardless of the portfolio performance. Under the optimal withdrawal strategy of a policyholder,…
The guaranteed minimum withdrawal benefit (GMWB) rider, as an add on to a variable annuity (VA), guarantees the return of premiums in the form of peri- odic withdrawals while allowing policyholders to participate fully in any market gains. GMWB riders represent an embedded option on the account value with a fee structu…
Optimizes retirement income with MBGs and neural networks for longevity risk.
problem Maximizing lifetime withdrawals while managing longevity risk.
method Neural-network optimization under stochastic mortality.
result International diversification and longevity pooling improve retirement outcomes.
In this paper, we review pricing of variable annuity living and death guarantees offered to retail investors in many countries. Investors purchase these products to take advantage of market growth and protect savings. We present pricing of these products via an optimal stochastic control framework, and review the exist…
This paper offers a financial economic perspective on the optimal time (and age) at which the owner of a Variable Annuity (VA) policy with a Guaranteed Living Withdrawal Benefit (GLWB) rider should initiate guaranteed lifetime income payments. We abstract from utility, bequest and consumption preference issues by treat…
In a market with stochastic volatility and jumps, we consider a VIX-linked fee structure for variable annuity contracts with guaranteed minimum withdrawal benefits (GMWB). Our goal is to assess the effectiveness of the VIX-linked fee structure in decreasing the sensitivity of the insurer's liability to volatility risk.…
RIVCoin stabilizes cryptocurrency portfolios through a DAO and redistributes income.
problem Stabilizing cryptocurrency value and aligning incentives for all users.
method Decentralized DAO, diversified reserves, and income redistribution.
result Aligns incentives for wealthier users to stabilize smaller users' risk.
In this paper we consider the pricing of variable annuities (VAs) with guaranteed minimum withdrawal benefits. We consider two pricing approaches, the classical risk-neutral approach and the benchmark approach, and we examine the associated static and optimal behaviors of both the investor and insurer. The first model …
A new robust PCA estimator combining M-estimators and minimum divergence estimators.
problem Adverse effect of outlying observations in PCA for high-dimensional data.
method Minimum density power divergence estimator combined with a computationally efficient algorithm.
result High breakdown guarantee regardless of data dimension with theoretical support and practical applications.
Paper provides a performance guarantee for spectral clustering.
problem Finding the global solution to the minimum ratio cut problem.
method Two-step spectral clustering method with a rounding step, analyzed using two-to-infinity norm perturbation bounds.
result Spectral clustering is guaranteed to output the global solution under certain conditions.
The use of absolute return volatility has many modelling benefits says John Cotter. An illustration is given for the market risk measure, minimum capital requirements.
A variable annuity contract with Guaranteed Minimum Withdrawal Benefit (GMWB) promises to return the entire initial investment through cash withdrawals during the contract plus the remaining account balance at maturity, regardless of the portfolio performance. Under the optimal(dynamic) withdrawal strategy of a policyh…
We determine the optimal amount of life insurance for a household of two wage earners. We consider the simple case of exponential utility, thereby removing wealth as a factor in buying life insurance, while retaining the relationship among life insurance, income, and the probability of dying and thus losing that income…
Model trains agents to optimize saving and investment strategies for diverse retirement needs.
problem Optimal saving and investment strategies for individuals in varied employment and income profiles.
method Deep reinforcement learning to train intelligent agents with heterogeneous profiles.
result Flexible methodology estimates lifetime consumption and investment choices for different profiles.
In this paper we consider three types of embedded options in pension benefit design. The first is the Florida second election (FSE) option, offered to public employees in the state of Florida in 2002. Employees were given the option to convert from a defined contribution (DC) plan to a defined benefit (DB) plan at a ti…
Wide neural networks with asymmetrical node scaling converge globally and learn features.
problem Global convergence and feature learning in over-parameterised shallow networks.
method Gradient-based optimisation of wide, shallow neural networks with asymmetrical node scaling.
result Gradient flow and gradient descent converge to a global minimum and learn features, unlike in the NTK parameterisation.
Artificial intelligence, or AI, enhancements are increasingly shaping our daily lives. Financial decision-making is no exception to this. We introduce the notion of AI Alter Egos, which are shadow robo-investors, and use a unique data set covering brokerage accounts for a large cross-section of investors over a sample …
Paper examines how income support affects retirement decisions for low-income individuals.
problem Retirement decisions of low-income individuals affected by income disaster.
method Modeling consumption/savings, investment, and retirement choices with income support.
result Optimal retirement decision depends on the level of income support provided.
Shaped by structural forces of change, banking in emerging markets has recently experienced a decline in its traditional activities, leading banks to diversify into new business strategies. This paper examines whether the observed shift into non-interest based activities improves financial performance. Using a sample o…
Prize linked savings accounts provide a return in the form of randomly chosen accounts receiving large cash prizes, in lieu of a guaranteed and uniform interest rate. This model became legal for American national banks upon bipartisan passage of the American Savings Promotion Act in December 2014, and many states have …
In the present paper we provide a two-step principal protection strategy obtained by combining a modification of the Constant Proportion Portfolio Insurance (CPPI) algorithm and a classical Option Based Portfolio Insurance (OBPI) mechanism. Such a novel approach consists in assuming that the percentage of wealth invest…
This paper improves indoor positioning accuracy by deploying reference nodes to ensure Line-of-Sight.
problem Systematic bias errors in indoor positioning due to non-LoS propagation.
method Model indoor service area as a graph, partition into cliques for reference nodes, set minimum distance and angle parameters.
result Guaranteed LoS to reference nodes improves indoor positioning accuracy and precision.