On the Optimal Dividend Problem for Insurance Risk Models with Surplus-Dependent Premiums

This paper concerns an optimal dividend distribution problem for an insurance company with surplus-dependent premium. In the absence of dividend payments, such a risk process is a particular case of so-called piecewise deterministic Markov processes. The control mechanism chooses the size of dividend payments. The objective consists in maximazing the sum of the expected cumulative discounted dividend payments received until the time of ruin and a penalty payment at the time of ruin, which is an increasing function of the size of the shortfall at ruin. A complete solution is presented to the corresponding stochastic control problem. We identify the associated Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman equation and find necessary and sufficient conditions for optimality of a single dividend-band strategy, in terms of particular Gerber-Shiu functions. A number of concrete examples are analyzed

How much we gain by surplus-dependent premiums -- asymptotic analysis of ruin probability

In this paper, we build on the techniques developed in Albrecher et al. (2013), to generate initial-boundary value problems for ruin probabilities of surplus-dependent premium risk processes, under a renewal case scenario, Erlang (2) claim arrivals, and an exponential claims scenario, Erlang (2) claim sizes. Applying the approximation theory of solutions of linear ordinary differential equations developed in Fedoryuk (1993), we derive the asymptotics of the ruin probabilities when the initial reserve tends to infinity. When considering premiums that are {\it linearly} dependent on reserves, representing for instance returns on risk-free investments of the insurance capital, we firstly derive explicit formulas for the ruin probabilities, from which we can easily determine their asymptotics, only to match the ones obtained for general premiums dependent on reserves. We compare them with the asymptotics of the equivalent ruin probabilities when the premium rate is fixed over time, to measure the gain generated by this additional mechanism of binding the premium rates with the amount of reserve own by the insurance company

A Review of First-Passage Theory for the Segerdahl-Tichy Risk Process and Open Problems

International audienceThe Segerdahl-Tichy Process, characterized by exponential claims and state dependent drift, has drawn a considerable amount of interest, due to its economic interest (it is the simplest risk process which takes into account the effect of interest rates). It is also the simplest non-Lévy, non-diffusion example of a spectrally negative Markov risk model. Note that for both spectrally negative Lévy and diffusion processes, first passage theories which are based on identifying two "basic" monotone harmonic functions/martingales have been developed. This means that for these processes many control problems involving dividends, capital injections, etc., may be solved explicitly once the two basic functions have been obtained. Furthermore, extensions to general spectrally negative Markov processes are possible; unfortunately, methods for computing the basic functions are still lacking outside the Lévy and diffusion classes. This divergence between theoretical and numerical is strikingly illustrated by the Segerdahl process, for which there exist today six theoretical approaches, but for which almost nothing has been computed, with the exception of the ruin probability. Below, we review four of these methods, with the purpose of drawing attention to connections between them, to underline open problems, and to stimulate further work

Exact and asymptotic results for insurance risk models with surplus-dependent premiums

In this paper we develop a symbolic technique to obtain asymptotic expressions for ruin probabilities and discounted penalty functions in renewal insurance risk models when the premium income depends on the present surplus of the insurance portfolio. The analysis is based on boundary problems for linear ordinary differential equations with variable coefficients. The algebraic structure of the Green's operators allows us to develop an intuitive way of tackling the asymptotic behavior of the solutions, leading to exponential-type expansions and Cram\'er-type asymptotics. Furthermore, we obtain closed-form solutions for more specific cases of premium functions in the compound Poisson risk model

Exact and asymptotic results for insurance risk models with surplus-dependent premiums

In this paper we develop a symbolic technique to obtain asymptotic expressions for ruin probabilities and discounted penalty functions in renewal insurance risk models when the premium income depends on the present surplus of the insurance portfolio. The analysis is based on boundary problems for linear ordinary differential equations with variable coefficients. The algebraic structure of the Green's operators allows us to develop an intuitive way of tackling the asymptotic behavior of the solutions, leading to exponential-type expansions and Cram\'er-type asymptotics. Furthermore, we obtain closed-form solutions for more specific cases of premium functions in the compound Poisson risk model.

Exit Problems for Lévy and Markov Processes with One-Sided Jumps and Related Topics

Exit problems for one-dimensional Lévy processes are easier when jumps only occur in one direction. In the last few years, this intuition became more precise: we know now that a wide variety of identities for exit problems of spectrally-negative Lévy processes may be ergonomically expressed in terms of two q-harmonic functions (or scale functions or positive martingales) W and Z. The proofs typically require not much more than the strong Markov property, which hold, in principle, for the wider class of spectrally-negative strong Markov processes. This has been established already in particular cases, such as random walks, Markov additive processes, Lévy processes with omega-state-dependent killing, and certain Lévy processes with state dependent drift, and seems to be true for general strong Markov processes, subject to technical conditions. However, computing the functions W and Z is still an open problem outside the Lévy and diffusion classes, even for the simplest risk models with state-dependent parameters (say, Ornstein–Uhlenbeck or Feller branching diffusion with phase-type jumps)