In this paper, based on the additive measure integral representation of a non-additive measure integral, it is shown that any comonotonically additive premium principle can be represented as an integral of the distorted decumulative distribution function of the insurance risk. Furthermore, a sufficient and necessary condition that a premium principle is a distortion premium principle is given.

In an editorial in ASTIN BULLETIN, Hans Bühlmann (2002) suggests it is time to change the teaching of life insurance theory towards the real life challenges of that industry. The following note is a response to this editorial. In Bergen we have partially taught the NUMAT, or the NUMeraire based Actuarial Teaching since the beginning of the 90's at the Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration (NHH). In this short note we point out that there may be some practical problems when these principles are to be implemented.

The probability density function of the time of ruin in the classical model with exponential claim sizes is obtained directly by inversion of the associated Laplace transform. This result is then used to obtain explicit closed-form expressions for the moments. The form of the density is examined for various parameter choices.

In nonlife insurance, actuaries usually resort to random effects to take unexplained heterogeneity into account (in the spirit of the Bühlmann-Straub model). This paper aims to study the kind of dependence induced by the introduction of correlated latent variables in the annual numbers of claims reported by policyholders. The effect of reporting claims on the a posteriori distribution of the random effects will be made precise. This will be done by establishing some stochastic monotonicity property of the a posteriori distribution with respect to the claims history.

I applaud the article as it is exactly the type of reaction to my editorial in Astin Bulletin 32(2) that I hoped to provoke. Of course Aase and Persson's contribution is much more academic in style than mine which is more journalistic.

To my understanding there are three important messages on which every reader of their article should reflect.

Under a guaranteed annuity option, an insurer guarantees to convert a policyholder's accumulated funds to a life annuity at a fixed rate when the policy matures. If the annuity rates provided under the guarantee are more beneficial to the policyholder than the prevailing rates in the market the insurer has to make up the difference. Such guarantees are common in many US tax sheltered insurance products. These guarantees were popular in UK retirement savings contracts issued in the 1970's and 1980's when long-term interest rates were high. At that time, the options were very far out of the money and insurance companies apparently assumed that interest rates would remain high and thus that the guarantees would never become active. In the 1990's, as long-term interest rates began to fall, the value of these guarantees rose. Because of the way the guarantee was written, two other factors influenced the cost of these guarantees. First, strong stock market performance meant that the amounts to which the guarantee applied increased significantly. Second, the mortality assumption implicit in the guarantee did not anticipate the improvement in mortality which actually occurred.

The emerging liabilities under these guarantees threatened the solvency of some companies and led to the closure of Equitable Life (UK) to new business. In this paper we explore the pricing and risk management of these guarantees.

A three parameter Gaussian exponential approximation to some compound Poisson distributions is considered. It is constructed by specifying the reciprocal of the mean excess function as a linear affine function below some threshold and a positive constant above this threshold. As an analytical approximation to compound Poisson distributions, it is only feasible either for a limited range of the Poisson parameter or for higher coefficients of variation. A semiparametric determination of the unknown threshold parameter is proposed. The analysis of a real-life example from pension fund mathematics displays an improved quality of fit of the new model when compared with other simple good alternative approximations based on the zero gamma, translated gamma and zero translated gamma.

In this paper we revisit an economic model of Buhlmann (ASTIN Bulletin, 1980) and derive equilibrium pricing transforms. We obtain the Esscher Transform and the Wang Transform under different sets of assumptions on the aggregate economic environment. We show that the Esscher Transform and the Wang Transform exhibit very different behaviors when used in pricing insurance risks.

This paper proposes a consistent approach to discrete time valuation in insurance and finance. This approach uses the growth optimal portfolio as reference unit or benchmark. When used as benchmark, it is shown that all benchmarked price processes are supermartingales. Benchmarked fair price processes are characterized as martingales. No measure transformation is needed for the fair pricing of insurance policies and derivatives. The standard actuarial pricing rule is obtained as a particular case of fair pricing when the contingent claim is independent from the growth optimal portfolio.

1991 Mathematics Subject Classification: primary 90A12 secondary 60G30, 62P20

JEL Classification: G10, G13

The paper derives many existing risk measures and premium principles by minimizing a Markov bound for the tail probability. Our approach involves two exogenous functions v(S) and φ(S, π) and another exogenous parameter α ≤ 1. Minimizing a general Markov bound leads to the following unifying equation:

For any random variable, the risk measure π is the solution to the unifying equation. By varying the functions φ and v, the paper derives the mean value principle, the zero-utility premium principle, the Swiss premium principle, Tail VaR, Yaari's dual theory of risk, mixture of Esscher principles and more. The paper also discusses combining two risks with super-additive properties and sub-additive properties. In addition, we recall some of the important characterization theorems of these risk measures.

We estimate Value-at-Risk for sums of dependent random variables. We model multivariate dependent random variables using archimedean copulas. This structure allows one to calculate the asymptotic behaviour of extremal events. An important application of such results are Value-at-Risk estimates for sums of dependent random variables.

We consider a risk process modelled as a compound Poisson process. We find the optimal dynamic unlimited excess of loss reinsurance strategy to minimize infinite time ruin probability, and prove the existence of a smooth solution of the corresponding Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman equation as well as a verification theorem. Numerical examples with exponential, shifted exponential, and Pareto claims are given.

In this paper non-normal distributions via scale mixtures are introduced into insurance applications. The symmetric distributions of interest are the Student-t and exponential power (EP) distributions. A Bayesian approach is adopted with the aid of simulation to obtain posterior summaries. We shall show that the computational burden for the Bayesian calculations is alleviated via the scale mixtures representations. Illustrative examples are given.

The idea of using common Poisson shock processes to model dependent event frequencies is well known in the reliability literature. In this paper we examine these models in the context of insurance loss modelling and credit risk modelling. To do this we set up a very general common shock framework for losses of a number of different types that allows for both dependence in loss frequencies across types and dependence in loss severities. Our aims are threefold: to demonstrate that the common shock model is a very natural way of approaching the modelling of dependent losses in an insurance or risk management context; to provide a summary of some analytical results concerning the nature of the dependence implied by the common shock specification; to examine the aggregate loss distribution that results from the model and its sensitivity to the specification of the model parameters.

In this paper we study the asymptotic behaviour of the joint distribution of reinsurance aggregate claim amounts for large values of the retention level under various dependence assumptions. We prove that, under certain dependence assumptions, for large values of the retention level the ratio between the joint distribution of the aggregate losses and the product of the marginal distributions converges to a constant value that only depends on the frequency parameters.

We consider a financial market driven by a continuous time homogeneous Markov chain. Conditions for absence of arbitrage and for completeness are spelled out, non-arbitrage pricing of derivatives is discussed, and details are worked out for some cases. Closed form expressions are obtained for interest rate derivatives. Computations typically amount to solving a set of first order partial differential equations. An excursion into risk minimization in the incomplete case illustrates the matrix techniques that are instrumental in the model.