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Net Reserve Calculation for Whole Life Insurance Under Mean-Reverting Stochastic Interest Rate Models

  • Haoqi Lyu and Hailiang Yang EMAIL logo
Published/Copyright: March 11, 2025

Abstract

Reserve calculation is crucial for insurance companies. Due to the long-term nature of life insurance products, stochastic interest rate models are more suitable when calculating the premium and reserve of a life insurance product. In this article, we use several popular mean-reverting stochastic interest rate models to study the impact of the model and its parameters on the values of reserves for life insurance products. We employ linear regression, moment estimation, and error optimization methods to calibrate the Vasicek, Cox-Ingersoll-Ross (CIR), CIR#, and Chen models. Our analysis reveals that when applying mean-reverting stochastic interest rate models to a whole life insurance policy, the initial interest rate and the long-term mean have a significant influence on the net reserve value. However, the speed of reversion and volatility only marginally impact the net reserve. Additionally, we observe that the numerical result of the net reserve is sensitive to the time period of the interest rate data and the term structures of the yield rates used in the analysis.


Corresponding author: Hailiang Yang, Department of Financial and Actuarial Mathematics, Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, Suzhou, China, E-mail:

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the referees and the handling editor for their many helpful comments and suggestions which significantly improve the quality of the research and greatly enhance the clarity of the article. The research of Hailiang Yang is supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant number 12471452) and a grant from Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University (Grant number RDF-23-01-006).

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Received: 2023-08-09
Accepted: 2025-02-06
Published Online: 2025-03-11

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