保单持有人退保行为对变额年金利益保证风险对冲的影响研究

给出保单持有人退保行为影响下的变额年金定价模型和对冲模型,当保单持有人分别采取无退保、固定退保和动态退保三种行为策略时,基于包含最低身故利益保证、最低满期利益保证和最低提取利益保证的三种不同的变额年金,运用蒙特卡罗模拟测试出保单持有人采取不同的退保策略对不同利益保证的变额年金风险对冲有着显著的不同影响。     

传统险利率风险及变额年金产品风险的评估

本文首先分析了新会计准则实施对固定预定利率传统寿险产品的利润影响,在此基础上分析了利率市场化对传统险定价的影响,分析了固定预定利率的传统产品存在资债期限不匹配风险及市场竞争力不足的客观现状。在介绍变额年金的同时,给出了具体风险评估,最后对国内开办变额年金业务的前景进行了展望。     

细究国内首款变额年金保险

作为中国社会养老保障体系的三大支柱之一,企业年金近来蓬勃发展,年均增长超过30%。5月,中国保监会发布了《关于开展变额年金保险试点的通知》和《变额年金保险管理暂行办法》,正式在北京、上海等五地启动变额年金保险的试点工作。6月,金盛保险宣布获得保监会关于引入创新型变额年金产品的批复,推出国内首款变额年金保险——金盛"保得盈"变额年金计划,这将为红火的年金市场添一把柴     

变额年金上海试点全面风控防蹈投连覆辙

由于变额年金保险的风险程度较高，保监会对正在进行的变额年金保险试点过程中的风险控制尤为重视。但事实上，尽管该类产品刚刚出现在国内市场上，但一些不规范销售的苗头已经有所显露。     

弱市催生变额年金保险

千呼万唤,变额年金保险终于面世。变额年金除了可以提供保险保障功能之外,投保人可以享受意外身故的赔付,期满以后还可以申请将满期金转化成年金方式领取。这让投资者在保险理财领域又多了一个新的选择。6月20日,金盛人寿正式推出国内首款变额年金保险。据悉,金盛人寿正式推出的产品"保得盈"变额年金计划是一款七年期趸交型产品,最低保费限制是10万元,采用最低满期利益保证形式提供100%满期本金。据悉,与不允许保本的投连险相比,该变额年金除了可以提供保险保障功能     

变额年金产品面临市考验 管理费偏高遭质疑

9月20日，保监会正式批复华泰人寿设立变额年金投资账户的申请，同意其设立3个投资账户。这是今年以来国内保险市场上第三款即将面市的变额年金产品。此外，光大永明人寿变额年金产品正在进行内部测试，同时正向保监会申请设立相关投资账户，预计明年一季度有望推出。     

变额年金保险:一场革命性的变革

变额年金保险兼顾养老、投资、最低保证三方面功能,符合我国保险消费者的偏好。2011年5月,中国保监会发布《关于开展变额年金保险试点的通知》(简称《通知》)和《变额年金保险管理暂行办法》(简称《暂行办法》),这标志着国内寿险产品创新在经过多年的沉寂之后,一种新型的寿险理财产品终于要面世了。近十年来,养老年金类产品发展     

关于变额年金产品的监管、法律和发展思考

源于欧美保险市场的变额年金产品,在2011年正式登陆我国人身险市场。2011年6月20日,金盛人寿对外宣布,推出一款名为"保得盈"的变额年金计划,产品将在上海、北京、广州和深圳四个首批试点城市开售。2011年7月21日,中美联泰大都会人寿也宣布推出了"步步稳赢变额年金计划"。至此,我国保险市场上有了最新的两款变额年金产品。变额年金产品对大多数中     

变额年金保险：一场革命性的变革

2011年5月,中国保监会发布《关于开展变额年金保险试点的通知》（简称《通知》）和《变额年金保险管理暂行办法》（简称《暂行办法》）,这标志着国内寿险产品创新在经过多年的沉寂之后,一种新型的寿险理财产品终于要面世了。     

关于变额年金产品的监管和发展的思考

本文介绍了我国新近推出的变额年金产品,在参照欧美和日本变额年金产品发展历程的基础上,指出该产品的监管挑战主要存在于对销售行为和偿付能力方面的监管,并且需要权衡好创新发展与控制风险之间的关系.变额年金所触发的法律问题主要表现在产品的法律定义、保证意义、合同司法解释以及投保人是否属于消费者的身份认定上.对于变额年金产品未来的持续发展,制度层面上需要解决变额年金的税收、继承、抵押、流转等问题.     

FAS 133: What Is Accounting Truth?

FAS 133, the rule that governs accounting for derivatives, has been controversial since its inception. Besides being expensive to implement and maintain, the rules often cause accounting treatment to diverge markedly from economic reality, making financial statements less transparent and less useful. For example, by marking to market only one side of what are in fact two‐sided (hedged) positions, FAS 133 often introduces artificial volatility into earnings and, in so doing, discourages companies from hedging. How should companies tackle financial disclosure and balance the economic and accounting effects of hedging? This article recommends that companies make economically sensible hedging decisions and then present two sets of earnings numbers to the investment community: (1) the first prepared and audited in strict accordance with GAAP; and (2) a supplemental calculation showing what earnings would have been had the firm qualified for hedge accounting treatment. This kind of supplemental disclosure should be viewed by companies as an opportunity to explain to their investors, creditors, and counterparties how they conceptualize, measure, and manage risk.     

Managing earnings risk under SFAS 133/IAS 39: the case of cash flow hedges

Whereas empirical studies suggest that firm hedging is influenced by accounting standards such as SFAS 133 and IAS 39, the nature of earnings risk management remains a puzzle. I develop a model that shows how non-financial firms that prefer predictable earnings jointly optimize their hedging strategy and the choice between fair-value and hedge accounting. I also examine the implications of these decisions for earnings predictability under SFAS 133/IAS 39. In this model, which has two accounting periods, earnings uncertainty arises from economic shocks and accounting mismatches. The specific influence of accounting mismatches is isolated with two benchmarks, one for firm hedging (cash flow hedging) and another for an accounting system that fully complies with the matching principle. In this forward-looking analysis, most firms significantly decrease the hedging of long-term earnings when faced with persistent price dynamics. Under non-persistent price dynamics, the levels of long-term earnings hedging are only slightly reduced. Therefore, the influence of accounting mismatches on firm hedging is highly dependent on the economic environment in which a firm operates, which suggests that the potential influence of accounting on firm hedging may be difficult to identify in archival studies. The analysis also offers a forward-looking perspective on the changing properties of earnings since the late 1970s that supplements the existing body of archival accounting studies. For example, under persistent price dynamics, forward-looking short-term earnings volatility may increase tenfold or more for cash flow hedging under fair-value accounting compared with a perfectly matched accounting system.     

Hedging and earnings management in the light of IFRS implementation: Evidence from the UK stock market

This study examines the association between IFRS implementation, hedging and earnings management. It identifies the financial attributes of firms that utilise hedging and explores the IFRS transition process for hedgers and non-hedgers. This study also investigates the effects of a firm’s decision to use hedging or earnings management on firm value. The findings show that the transition to IFRSs has affected the equity, earnings, leverage and liquidity of hedgers in a significantly positive manner as opposed to non-hedgers, who presented a generally significant negative change in their respective figures. Hedgers tend to be larger sized and exhibit higher profitability, growth, leverage and liquidity. Hedgers also tend to have foreign revenues, be cross-listed in foreign stock markets and audited by a Big 4 auditor. This study reports that hedging and earnings management display an inverse relation. Firm value is found to be positively related to hedging and negatively related to discretionary accruals and managerial opportunism. Effective corporate governance mechanisms are found to display a negative association with discretionary accruals and a positive relation with firm value.     

How fair-value accounting can influence firm hedging

The potential influence of accounting regulations on hedging strategies and the use of financial derivatives is a research topic that has attracted little attention in both the finance and the accounting literature. However, recent surveys suggest that company hedging can be substantially influenced by the accounting for financial instruments. In this study, we illustrate not only why but also how the accounting regulations may affect hedging behavior. We find that under mark-to-market accounting, most firms concerned with earnings smoothness adopt myopic hedging strategies relative to the benchmark, cash flow hedging. The specific influence of the accounting regulations depends on market and firm-specific characteristics, but, in general, the firms dramatically reduce the extent of hedging addressing price risk in future accounting periods. We illustrate that the change in hedging behavior significantly dampens the increase in earnings volatility stemming from fair value accounting of derivatives. However, the adjusted hedging strategies may substantially increase the firms’ cash flow volatility.     

An Optimal Product Mix for Hedging Longevity Risk in Life Insurance Companies: The Immunization Theory Approach

This article investigates the natural hedging strategy to deal with longevity risks for life insurance companies. We propose an immunization model that incorporates a stochastic mortality dynamic to calculate the optimal life insurance–annuity product mix ratio to hedge against longevity risks. We model the dynamic of the changes in future mortality using the well‐known Lee–Carter model and discuss the model risk issue by comparing the results between the Lee–Carter and Cairns–Blake–Dowd models. On the basis of the mortality experience and insurance products in the United States, we demonstrate that the proposed model can lead to an optimal product mix and effectively reduce longevity risks for life insurance companies.     

Some Issues in Corporate Hedging Policy

The increased volatility of financial markets in recent years has led to a corresponding increase in the volatility of corporate earnings. This has, in turn, led to a surge of interest in hedging. At first sight, it may seem that, to the extent it can reduce volatility, hedging is a worthwhile activity. However, we argue that the issue is less clear-cut than meets the eye. In the process of developing our arguments, we shall look at some of the financial instruments available for hedging and shall show how they can be used for various hedging and non-hedging purposes.     

Hedge accounting and its influence on financial hedging: when the tail wags the dog

We analyse the application of hedge accounting and its influence on hedging behaviour in German and Swiss non-financial corporations. Of our sample companies, 72% apply hedge accounting. The likelihood of its use is associated with frequency of derivatives usage, size, IFRS experience, perceived importance of reduced earnings volatility and low growth opportunities. More than half of the companies using hedge accounting indicate that the accounting rules influence their hedging behaviour. Companies are more likely to be affected if they use derivatives only occasionally, are smaller, are highly leveraged, have dispersed shareholding, have fewer growth opportunities and hedge selectively.     

Optimal futures hedging under jump switching dynamics

The article develops a Markov regime switching Generalized Orthogonal GARCH model with conditional jump dynamics (JSGO) for optimal futures hedging. To the author's knowledge, there is no existing study on dynamic futures hedging investigating both the effects of regime switching and conditional jumps. This might be the fact that there is no existing hedging model encompassing both of these features. The JSGO solves this problem by introducing a jump switching filtering algorithm to infer ex post both the distributions of jumps and state variables and a recombining procedure to solve the path-dependency problem. To justify the usefulness of the JSGO on dynamic futures hedging, hedging exercises are performed using FTSE 100 futures data traded in the London International Financial Futures and Options Exchange (LIFFE). JSGO exhibits good out-of-sample performance compared to its jump-free and state-independent counterparts in terms of both criteria of variance reductions and utility improvements.     

Corporate incentives for hedging and hedge accounting

This article explores the information effect of financial riskmanagement. Financial hedging improves the informativeness ofcorporate earnings as a signal of management ability and projectquality by eliminating extraneous noise. Managerial and shareholderincentives regarding information transmission may differ, however,leading to conflicts regarding an optimal hedging policy. Weshow that these incentives depend on the accounting informationmade available by the firm. Under some circumstances, if hedgetransactions are not disclosed (i.e., firms report only aggregateearnings), managers hedge to achieve greater risk reductionthan they would if full disclosure were required. In these cases,it is optimal for shareholders to request only aggregate accountingreports.     

Product market power,industry structure,and corporate earnings management

This is the first study to establish a link between product market power of firms and the degree of earnings management. We hypothesize and document a significant and robust association between (a) a firm’s product market pricing power and its degree of earnings management, and (b) industry competitiveness and the degree of earnings management in the industry. Our study reveals that firms with inferior product market pricing power engage in greater discretionary earnings accruals, adding a new dimension to our understanding of the transparency and informativeness of firms’ financial statements. These findings are mirrored at the industry level where we document that more competitive industries are associated with greater earnings manipulation. The empirical evidence has direct implication on the informativeness and earnings quality of firms based on their product market power and competitiveness.