Risk Management for Pension Funds


Book Description

This book presents a consistent and complete framework for studying the risk management of a pension fund. It gives the reader the opportunity to understand, replicate and widen the analysis. To this aim, the book provides all the tools for computing the optimal asset allocation in a dynamic framework where the financial horizon is stochastic (longevity risk) and the investor's wealth is not self-financed. This tutorial enables the reader to replicate all the results presented. The R codes are provided alongside the presentation of the theoretical framework. The book explains and discusses the problem of hedging longevity risk even in an incomplete market, though strong theoretical results about an incomplete framework are still lacking and the problem is still being discussed in most recent literature.




Pension Fund Risk Management


Book Description

As pension fund systems decrease and dependency ratios increase, risk management is becoming more complex in public and private pension plans. Pension Fund Risk Management: Financial and Actuarial Modeling sheds new light on the current state of pension fund risk management and provides new technical tools for addressing pension risk from an integr




Modelling Longevity Dynamics for Pensions and Annuity Business


Book Description

Mortality improvements, uncertainty in future mortality trends and the relevant impact on life annuities and pension plans constitute important topics in the field of actuarial mathematics and life insurance techniques. In particular, actuarial calculations concerning pensions, life annuities and other living benefits (provided, for example, by long-term care insurance products and whole life sickness covers) are based on survival probabilities which necessarily extend over a long time horizon. In order to avoid underestimation of the related liabilities, the insurance company (or the pension plan) must adopt an appropriate forecast of future mortality. Great attention is currently being devoted to the management of life annuity portfolios, both from a theoretical and a practical point of view, because of the growing importance of annuity benefits paid by private pension schemes. In particular, the progressive shift from defined benefit to defined contribution pension schemes has increased the interest in life annuities with a guaranteed annual amount. This book provides a comprehensive and detailed description of methods for projecting mortality, and an extensive introduction to some important issues concerning longevity risk in the area of life annuities and pension benefits. It relies on research work carried out by the authors, as well as on a wide teaching experience and in CPD (Continuing Professional Development) initiatives. The following topics are dealt with: life annuities in the framework of post-retirement income strategies; the basic mortality model; recent mortality trends that have been experienced; general features of projection models; discussion of stochastic projection models, with numerical illustrations; measuring and managing longevity risk.







Explaining Divergent Levels of Longevity in High-Income Countries


Book Description

During the last 25 years, life expectancy at age 50 in the United States has been rising, but at a slower pace than in many other high-income countries, such as Japan and Australia. This difference is particularly notable given that the United States spends more on health care than any other nation. Concerned about this divergence, the National Institute on Aging asked the National Research Council to examine evidence on its possible causes. According to Explaining Divergent Levels of Longevity in High-Income Countries, the nation's history of heavy smoking is a major reason why lifespans in the United States fall short of those in many other high-income nations. Evidence suggests that current obesity levels play a substantial part as well. The book reports that lack of universal access to health care in the U.S. also has increased mortality and reduced life expectancy, though this is a less significant factor for those over age 65 because of Medicare access. For the main causes of death at older ages-cancer and cardiovascular disease-available indicators do not suggest that the U.S. health care system is failing to prevent deaths that would be averted elsewhere. In fact, cancer detection and survival appear to be better in the U.S. than in most other high-income nations, and survival rates following a heart attack also are favorable. Explaining Divergent Levels of Longevity in High-Income Countries identifies many gaps in research. For instance, while lung cancer deaths are a reliable marker of the damage from smoking, no clear-cut marker exists for obesity, physical inactivity, social integration, or other risks considered in this book. Moreover, evaluation of these risk factors is based on observational studies, which-unlike randomized controlled trials-are subject to many biases.




An Introduction to Computational Risk Management of Equity-Linked Insurance


Book Description

The quantitative modeling of complex systems of interacting risks is a fairly recent development in the financial and insurance industries. Over the past decades, there has been tremendous innovation and development in the actuarial field. In addition to undertaking mortality and longevity risks in traditional life and annuity products, insurers face unprecedented financial risks since the introduction of equity-linking insurance in 1960s. As the industry moves into the new territory of managing many intertwined financial and insurance risks, non-traditional problems and challenges arise, presenting great opportunities for technology development. Today's computational power and technology make it possible for the life insurance industry to develop highly sophisticated models, which were impossible just a decade ago. Nonetheless, as more industrial practices and regulations move towards dependence on stochastic models, the demand for computational power continues to grow. While the industry continues to rely heavily on hardware innovations, trying to make brute force methods faster and more palatable, we are approaching a crossroads about how to proceed. An Introduction to Computational Risk Management of Equity-Linked Insurance provides a resource for students and entry-level professionals to understand the fundamentals of industrial modeling practice, but also to give a glimpse of software methodologies for modeling and computational efficiency. Features Provides a comprehensive and self-contained introduction to quantitative risk management of equity-linked insurance with exercises and programming samples Includes a collection of mathematical formulations of risk management problems presenting opportunities and challenges to applied mathematicians Summarizes state-of-arts computational techniques for risk management professionals Bridges the gap between the latest developments in finance and actuarial literature and the practice of risk management for investment-combined life insurance Gives a comprehensive review of both Monte Carlo simulation methods and non-simulation numerical methods Runhuan Feng is an Associate Professor of Mathematics and the Director of Actuarial Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is a Fellow of the Society of Actuaries and a Chartered Enterprise Risk Analyst. He is a Helen Corley Petit Professorial Scholar and the State Farm Companies Foundation Scholar in Actuarial Science. Runhuan received a Ph.D. degree in Actuarial Science from the University of Waterloo, Canada. Prior to joining Illinois, he held a tenure-track position at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where he was named a Research Fellow. Runhuan received numerous grants and research contracts from the Actuarial Foundation and the Society of Actuaries in the past. He has published a series of papers on top-tier actuarial and applied probability journals on stochastic analytic approaches in risk theory and quantitative risk management of equity-linked insurance. Over the recent years, he has dedicated his efforts to developing computational methods for managing market innovations in areas of investment combined insurance and retirement planning.




The Longevity Economy


Book Description

Oldness: a social construct at odds with reality that constrains how we live after middle age and stifles business thinking on how to best serve a group of consumers, workers, and innovators that is growing larger and wealthier with every passing day. Over the past two decades, Joseph F. Coughlin has been busting myths about aging with groundbreaking multidisciplinary research into what older people actually want -- not what conventional wisdom suggests they need. In The Longevity Economy, Coughlin provides the framing and insight business leaders need to serve the growing older market: a vast, diverse group of consumers representing every possible level of health and wealth, worth about $8 trillion in the United States alone and climbing. Coughlin provides deep insight into a population that consistently defies expectations: people who, through their continued personal and professional ambition, desire for experience, and quest for self-actualization, are building a striking, unheralded vision of longer life that very few in business fully understand. His focus on women -- they outnumber men, control household spending and finances, and are leading the charge toward tomorrow's creative new narrative of later life -- is especially illuminating. Coughlin pinpoints the gap between myth and reality and then shows businesses how to bridge it. As the demographics of global aging transform and accelerate, it is now critical to build a new understanding of the shifting physiological, cognitive, social, family, and psychological realities of the longevity economy.




ERM and QRM in Life Insurance


Book Description

This book deals with Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) and, in particular, Quantitative Risk Management (QRM) in life insurance business. Constituting a “bridge” between traditional actuarial mathematics and insurance risk management processes, its purpose is to provide advanced undergraduate and graduate students in the Actuarial Sciences, Finance and Economics with the basics of ERM (in general) and QRM applied to life insurance business. The main topics dealt with are: general issues on ERM, risk management tools for life insurance and life annuities, deterministic and stochastic analysis of the behaviour of a portfolio fund, application of sensitivity testing to assess ranges of results of interest, stress testing to assess the impact of extreme scenarios, and the product development process for life annuity products.




The Quest for Immortality: Science at the Frontiers of Aging


Book Description

"This is by far the best book I've read on the science of aging."—Andrew Weil, M.D. "Life-span Truth Will Set You Free from Age-old Worries," announced the Chicago Tribune upon the first publication of this book. The New England Journal of Medicine confirmed, "For readers interested in aging and longevity, this small book clearly explains the major concepts...extremely enjoyable to read." From NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw to Scientific American to the New York Times, S. Jay Olshansky and Bruce A. Carnes have stirred up controversy and brought clarity to an issue often muddled by exaggeration and pseudoscience. Medical science has uncovered a host of answers to the problems of aging, but many of the most exciting discoveries are buried in scientific journals or overshadowed by popular quick-fix treatments. The Quest for Immortality explains the real science of aging and shows which treatments offered by today's multi-billion-dollar anti-aging industries offer real hope, and which are a waste of money and time.




OECD Pensions Outlook 2012


Book Description

This edition looks at pension reform during the crisis and beyond, the design of automatic adjustment mechanisms, reversals of systemic pension reforms in Central and Eastern Europe, coverage of private pension systems and guarantees indefined contribution pension systems.