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 ...

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the problem of the fair valuation of annuities contracts. The market consistent valuation of these products requires a pricing framework which includes the two main sources of risk affecting the value of the annuity, i.e. interest rate risk and mortality risk. As the IASB has not set any specific guidelines as to which models are the most appropriate for ...

We study the valuation of unit-linked life insurance contracts with surrender guarantees. Instead of solving an optimal stopping problem, we propose a more realistic approach accounting for policyholders’ rationality in exercising their surrender option. The valuation is conducted at the portfolio level by assuming the surrender intensity to be bounded from below and from above. The lower bound...

We address the problem of pricing contingent claims written on electricity. The special feature of this paper is to consider contract pricing within a market for power producing plants. Calculating equilibrium prices for this market, we obtain a valuation for electricity contingent claims which is fair in the sense that arbitrage is excluded for capacity and claim trading.

Fair pricing of embedded options in life insurance contracts is usually conducted by using risk-neutral valuation. This pricing framework assumes a perfect hedging strategy, which insurance companies can hardly pursue in practice. In this paper, we extend the risk-neutral valuation concept with a risk measurement approach. We accomplish this by first calibrating contract parameters that lead to...

The notion of “value” has always been a subjective and contentious issue. Indeed, Value is in the eye of the beholder. There are varied methods and practices for valuing property, as there are industries in which they are applied. For example, there are “replacement value”, “insurance value, “salvage value”, “appraised value”, “book value” and “fair market value”, to name a few, although in the...

In this chapter, we consider a theoretical model for the pricing and valuation of guaranteed annuity conversion options associated with certain unit-linked pension contracts in the UK. The valuation approach is based on the similarity between the payoff structure of the contract and a call option written on a coupon-bearing bond. The model makes use of a one-factor Heath-Jarrow-Morton framework...

Sloan (1996) is the first to document the accruals anomaly, the negative relation between accruals and subsequent stock returns. In this paper I investigate the effects of the recent and prominent adoption of fair-value accounting on the market valuation of accruals. Using a sample of firm-years from 2003 to 2005, I find that investors rationally price different earnings components when setting...