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The Liikanen Group proposes contingent convertible (CoCo) bonds as a potential mechanism to enhance financial stability in the banking industry. Especially life insurance companies could serve as CoCo bond holders as they are already the largest purchasers of bank bonds in Europe. We develop a stylized model with a direct financial connection between banking and insurance and study the effects of various types of bonds such as non-convertible bonds, write-down bonds and CoCos on banks' and insurers' risk situations. In addition, we compare insurers' capital requirements under the proposed Solvency II standard model as well as under an internal model that ex-ante anticipates additional risks due to possible conversion of the CoCo bond into bank shares. In order to check the robustness of our findings, we consider different CoCo designs (write-down factor, trigger value, holding time of bank shares) and compare the resulting capital requirements with those for holding non-convertible bonds. We identify situations in which insurers benefit from buying CoCo bonds due to lower capital requirements and higher coupon rates. Furthermore, our results highlight how the Solvency II standard model can mislead insurers in their CoCo investment decision due to economically irrational incentives.
I assess how Basel III, Solvency II and the low interest rate environment will affect the financial connection between the bank and insurance sector by changing the funding patterns of banks as well as the investment strategies of life insurance companies. Especially for life insurance companies, the current low interest rate environment poses a key risk since declining returns on investments jeopardize the guaranteed return on life insurance contracts, a core component of traditional life insurance contracts in several European countries. I consider a contingent claim framework with a direct financial connection between banks and life insurers via bank bonds. The results indicate that life insurers' demand for bank bonds increases over the mid-term but ultimately declines in the long-run. Since life insurers are the largest purchasers of bank bonds in Europe, banks could lose one of their main funding sources. In addition, I show that shareholder value driven life insurers' appetite for risk increases when the gap between asset return and liability growth diminishes. To check the robustness of the findings, I calibrate a prolonged low interest rate scenario. The results show that the insurer's risk appetite is even higher when interest rates remain persistently low. A sensitivity analysis regarding industry-specific regulatory safety levels reveals that contagion between bank and life insurer is driven by the insurers' demand for bank bonds which itself depends on the regulatory safety level of banks.
This article discusses the effects of the countercyclical premium discussed in insurance supervision in the context of Solvency II. While the basic principle of introducing countercyclical elements into Solvency II is endorsed, the authors argue for a system based on market scenarios which would enforce stricter capital requirements in boom times and less strict requirements in times of crisis.
The Liikanen Group proposes contingent convertible (CoCo) bonds as instruments to enhance financial stability in the banking industry. Especially life insurance companies could serve as CoCo bond holders as they are already the largest purchasers of bank bonds in Europe. The growing number of banks issuing CoCo bonds leads to a rising awareness of these hybrid securities among life insurers as they are increasingly looking for higher?yielding investments into bond?like asset classes during the current low interest rate period. Our contribution provides an insight for life insurance companies to understand the effects of holding CoCo bonds as implied by the Solvency II standards that will become effective by 2016.
Pursuant to art. 45 of the Solvency II Framework Directive, all insurance undertakings will be obliged to conduct an “Own Risk and Solvency Assessment” (ORSA). ORSA’s relevance is not limited only to the second pillar of Solvency II, where mainly qualitative requirements are to be found. ORSA rather exhibits strong interlinks with the first pillar and its quantitative requirements and may also serve as a trigger for transparency duties which form Solvency II’s third pillar. ORSA may thus be described in some respects as the glue that binds together all three pillars of Solvency II. ORSA is one of the most obvious examples of the supervisory shift from a rules-based to a principles-based approach. As such, ORSA has hitherto been only very roughly defined. Since it is for the undertaking to determine its own specific risk profile and to evaluate whether this risk profile deviates significantly from the assumptions underlying the standard formula, it seems only natural that the supervisor must specify in greater detail what these underlying assumptions are. The most practicable way to do so would be for EIOPA to establish a “standard insurer”, which implies a translation of the assumptions concerning the underlying probability distributions into directly observable characteristics. The creation of the standard insurer would be an important step towards relaxing the insurers’ fear of what ORSA might bring about.
Der Entwurf eines Lebensversicherungsreformgesetz der Bundesregierung vom 04.06.2014 adressiert die Folgen der derzeitigen Niedrigzinsphase für Lebensversicherungunternehmen und Lebensversicherte. Helmut Gründl kommentiert die vorgeschlagene Regelung zu den Bewertungsreserven, die Regelung zur Ausschüttungssperre sowie die Regelung zum Höchstzillmersatz. Der Beitrag konzentriert sich auf die Auswirkungen der Vorschläge auf die Renditeerwartungen des Kollektivs der Versicherungsnehmer sowie auf die Anreize potentieller Eigenkapitalgeber, sich an Versicherungsunternehmen zu beteiligen.
Low interest rates are becoming a threat to the stability of the life insurance industry, especially in countries such as Germany, where products with relatively high guaranteed returns sold in the past still represent a prominent share of the total portfolio. This contribution aims to assess and quantify the effects of the current low interest rate phase on the balance sheet of a representative German life insurer, given the current asset allocation and the outstanding liabilities. To do so, we generate a stochastic term structure of interest rates as well as stock market returns to simulate investment returns of a stylized life insurance business portfolio in a multi-period setting. Based on empirically calibrated parameters, we can observe the evolution of the life insurers' balance sheet over time with a special focus on their solvency situation. To account for different scenarios and in order to check the robustness of our findings, we calibrate different capital market settings and different initial situations of capital endowment. Our results suggest that a prolonged period of low interest rates would markedly affect the solvency situation of life insurers, leading to relatively high cumulative probability of default for less capitalized companies.