G32 Financing Policy; Financial Risk and Risk Management; Capital and Ownership Structure
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Unconventional green
(2023)
We analyze the effects of the PEPP (Pandemic Emergency Purchase Programme), the temporary quantitative easing implemented by the ECB immediately after the burst of the Covid-19 pandemic. We show that the differences in aim, size and flexibility with respect to the traditional Corporate Sector Purchase Programme (CSPP) were able to significantly involve, in addition to the directly targeted bonds, also the green bond segment. Via a standard difference- in-differences model we estimate that the yield on green bonds declined by more than 20 basis points after the PEPP. In order to take into account also the differences attributable to the eligibility to the programme, we employ a triple difference estimator. Bonds that at the same time were green and eligible benefitted of an additional premium of 39 basis points.
The European low-carbon transition began in the last few decades and is accelerating to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. This paper examines how climate-related transition indicators of a large European corporate firm relate to its CDS-implied credit risk across various time horizons. Findings show that firms with higher GHG emissions have higher CDS spreads at all tenors, including the 30-year horizon, particularly after the 2015 Paris Agreement, and in prominent industries such as Electricity, Gas, and Mining. Results suggest that the European CDS market is currently pricing, to some extent, albeit small, the exposure to transition risk for a firm across different time horizons. However, it fails to account for a company’s efforts to manage transition risks and its exposure to the EU Emissions Trading Scheme. CDS market participants seem to find challenging to risk-differentiate ETS-participating firms from other firms.
Socially responsible investing (SRI) continues to gain momentum in the financial market space for various reasons, starting with the looming effect of climate change and the drive toward a net-zero economy. Existing SRI approaches have included environmental, social, and governance (ESG) criteria as a further dimension to portfolio selection, but these approaches focus on classical investors and do not account for specific aspects of insurance companies. In this paper, we consider the stock selection problem of life insurance companies. In addition to stock risk, our model set-up includes other important market risk categories of insurers, namely interest rate risk and credit risk. In line with common standards in insurance solvency regulation, such as Solvency II, we measure risk using the solvency ratio, i.e. the ratio of the insurer’s market-based equity capital to the Value-at-Risk of all modeled risk categories. As a consequence, we employ a modification of Markowitz’s Portfolio Selection Theory by choosing the “solvency ratio” as a downside risk measure to obtain a feasible set of optimal portfolios in a three-dimensional (risk, return, and ESG) capital allocation plane. We find that for a given solvency ratio, stock portfolios with a moderate ESG level can lead to a higher expected return than those with a low ESG level. A highly ambitious ESG level, however, reduces the expected return. Because of the specific nature of a life insurer’s business model, the impact of the ESG level on the expected return of life insurers can substantially differ from the corresponding impact for classical investors.
Tail-correlation matrices are an important tool for aggregating risk measurements across risk categories, asset classes and/or business segments. This paper demonstrates that traditional tail-correlation matrices—which are conventionally assumed to have ones on the diagonal—can lead to substantial biases of the aggregate risk measurement’s sensitivities with respect to risk exposures. Due to these biases, decision-makers receive an odd view of the effects of portfolio changes and may be unable to identify the optimal portfolio from a risk-return perspective. To overcome these issues, we introduce the “sensitivity-implied tail-correlation matrix”. The proposed tail-correlation matrix allows for a simple deterministic risk aggregation approach which reasonably approximates the true aggregate risk measurement according to the complete multivariate risk distribution. Numerical examples demonstrate that our approach is a better basis for portfolio optimization than the Value-at-Risk implied tail-correlation matrix, especially if the calibration portfolio (or current portfolio) deviates from the optimal portfolio.
Tail-correlation matrices are an important tool for aggregating risk measurements across risk categories, asset classes and/or business segments. This paper demonstrates that traditional tail-correlation matrices—which are conventionally assumed to have ones on the diagonal—can lead to substantial biases of the aggregate risk measurement’s sensitivities with respect to risk exposures. Due to these biases, decision-makers receive an odd view of the effects of portfolio changes and may be unable to identify the optimal portfolio from a risk-return perspective. To overcome these issues, we introduce the “sensitivity-implied tail-correlation matrix”. The proposed tail-correlation matrix allows for a simple deterministic risk aggregation approach which reasonably approximates the true aggregate risk measurement according to the complete multivariate risk distribution. Numerical examples demonstrate that our approach is a better basis for portfolio optimization than the Value-at-Risk implied tail-correlation matrix, especially if the calibration portfolio (or current portfolio) deviates from the optimal portfolio.
Life insurance convexity
(2021)
Life insurers massively sell savings contracts with surrender options which allow policyholders to withdraw a guaranteed amount before maturity. These options move toward the money when interest rates rise. Using data on German life insurers, we estimate that a 1 percentage point increase in interest rates raises surrender rates by 17 basis points. We quantify the resulting liquidity risk in a calibrated model of surrender decisions and insurance cash flows. Simulations predict that surrender options can force insurers to sell up to 3% of their assets, depressing asset prices by 90 basis points. The effect is amplified by the duration of insurers' investments, and its impact on the term structure of interest rates depends on life insurers' investment strategy.
This paper sheds light on the life insurance sector’s liquidity risk exposure. Life insurers are important long-term investors on financial markets. Due to their long-term investment horizon they cannot quickly adapt to changes in macroeconomic conditions. Rising interest rates in particular can expose life insurers to run-like situations, since a slow interest rate passthrough incentivizes policyholders to terminate insurance policies and invest the proceeds at relatively high market interest rates. We develop and empirically calibrate a granular model of policyholder behavior and life insurance cash flows to quantify insurers’ liquidity risk exposure stemming from policy terminations. Our model predicts that a sharp interest rate rise by 4.5pp within two years would force life insurers to liquidate 12% of their initial assets. While the associated fire sale costs are small under reasonable assumptions, policy terminations plausibly erase 30% of life insurers’ capital due to mark-to-market accounting. Our analysis reveals a mechanism by which monetary policy tightening increases liquidity risk exposure of non-bank financial intermediaries with long-term assets.
We examine whether the uncertainty related to environmental, social, and governance (ESG) regulation developments is reflected in asset prices. We proxy the sensitivity of firms to ESG regulation uncertainty by the disparity across the components of their ESG ratings. Firms with high ESG disparity have a higher option-implied cost of protection against downside tail risk. The impact of the misalignment across the different dimensions of the ESG score is distinct from that of ESG score level itself. Aggregate downside risk bears a negative price for firms with low ESG disparity.
We document the structure of firm-bank relationships across the eleven largest euro area countries and present new stylised facts using novel data from the recent credit registry of the Eurosystem - AnaCredit. We look at the number of banking relationships, reliance on the main bank, credit instruments, loan maturity and interest rates. The granularity of the data allows us to account for cross country differences in firm characteristics. Firms in Southern European countries borrow from a larger number of banks and obtain a lower share of credit from the main bank compared to those in Northern European countries. They also tend to borrow more on short term, more expensive instruments and to obtain loans with shorter maturity. This is consistent with the hypothesis that Southern European countries rely less on relationship banking and obtain credit less conducive to firm growth, in line with the smaller average size of Southern European firms. Instead, no clear pattern emerges in terms of interest rates, consistent with the idea that banks appropriate part of the surplus generated by relationship lending through higher rates.
This paper analyzes the scope of the private market for pandemic insurance. We develop a framework that explains theoretically how the equilibrium price of pandemic insurance depends on accumulation risk, covariance between pandemic claims and other claims, and covariance between pandemic claims and the stock market performance. Using the natural catastrophe (NatCat) insurance market as a laboratory, we estimate the relationship between the insurance price markup and the tail characteristics of the loss distribution. Then, by using the high-frequency data tracking the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, we calibrate the loss distribution of a hypothetical insurance contract designed to alleviate the impact of the pandemic on small businesses. The pandemic insurance contract price markup corresponds to the top 20% markup observed in the NatCat insurance market. Then we analyze an intertemporal risk-sharing scheme that can reduce the expected shortfall of the loss distribution by 50%.