The paper develops a methodology to enable microscopic models of transportation systems to be accessible for a statistical study of traffic accidents. Our approach is intended to permit an understanding not only of historical losses but also of incidents that may occur in altered, potential future systems. Through such a counterfactual analysis, it is possible, from an insurance, but also from an engineering perspective, to assess the impact of changes in the design of vehicles and transport systems in terms of their impact on road safety and functionality.
Structurally, we characterize the total loss distribution approximatively as a mean-variance mixture. This also yields valuation procedures that can be used instead of Monte Carlo simulation. Specifically, we construct an implementation based on the open-source traffic simulator SUMO and illustrate the potential of the approach in counterfactual case studies.
This paper considers variable annuity (VA) contracts embedded with guaranteed minimum accumulation benefit (GMAB) riders when policyholder’s proceeds are taxed upon early surrender or maturity. These contracts promise the return of the premium paid by the policyholder, or a higher rolled-up value, at the end of the investment period. A partial differential equation valuation framework which exploits the numerical method of lines is used to determine fair fees that render the policyholder and insurer breakeven. Two taxation regimes are considered: one where capital gains are allowed to offset losses and a second where gains do not offset losses. Most insurance providers highlight the tax-deferred features of VA contracts. We show that the regime under which the insured is taxed significantly impacts prices. If losses are allowed to offset gains then this enhances the market, increasing the policyholder’s willingness to participate in the market compared to the case when losses are not allowed to offset gains. With fair fees from the policyholder’s perspective, we show that the net profit is generally positive for insurance companies offering the contract as a naked option without any hedge. We also show how investment policy, as reflected in the Sharpe ratio, impacts and interacts with policyholder persistency.
This paper investigates an operation mechanism for mutual aid platforms to develop more sustainably and profitably. A mutual aid platform is an online risk-sharing platform for risk-heterogeneous participants, and the platform extracts revenues by charging participants commission and subscription fees. A modeling framework is proposed to identify the optimal commissions and subscriptions for mutual aid platforms. Participants are divided into different types based on their loss probabilities and values derived from the platform. We present how these commissions and subscriptions should be set in a mutual aid plan to maximize the platform’s revenues. Our analysis emphasized the importance of accounting for risk heterogeneity in mutual aid platforms. Specifically, different types of participants should be charged different commissions/subscriptions depending on their loss probabilities and values on the platform. Participants’ shared costs should be determined based on their loss probabilities. Adverse selection occurs on the platform if participants with different risks pay the same shared costs. Our results also show that the platform’s maximum revenue will be lower if the platform charges the same fee to all participants. The numerical results of a practical example illustrate that the optimal commission/subscription scheme and risk-sharing rule result in considerable improvements in platform revenue over the current scheme implemented by the platform.
While many of the prevalent stochastic mortality models provide adequate short- to medium-term forecasts, only few provide biologically plausible descriptions of mortality on longer horizons and are sufficiently stable to be of practical use in smaller populations. Among the very first to address the issue of modelling adult mortality in small populations was the SAINT model, which has been used for pricing, reserving and longevity risk management by the Danish Labour Market Supplementary Pension Fund (ATP) for more than a decade. The lessons learned have broadened our understanding of desirable model properties from the practitioner’s point of view and have led to a revision of model components to address accuracy, stability, flexibility, explainability and credibility concerns. This paper serves as an update to the original version published 10 years ago and presents the SAINT model with its modifications and the rationale behind them. The main improvement is the generalization of frailty models from deterministic structures to a flexible class of stochastic models. We show by example how the SAINT framework is used for modelling mortality at ATP and make comparisons to the Lee-Carter model.