Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/87725 
Year of Publication: 
2013
Series/Report no.: 
Bundesbank Discussion Paper No. 41/2013
Publisher: 
Deutsche Bundesbank, Frankfurt a. M.
Abstract: 
In this paper, we present a new approach to measuring interest rate risk for insurers within the Swiss Solvency Test, which overcomes the shortcomings of the standard model. The standard model of the Swiss Solvency Test is based on more interest rate risk factors than are actually needed to capture interest rate risk, it allows for significantly negative interest rates and it tends toward procyclical solvency capital requirements. Our new approach treats interest rate risk with direct reference to the underlying term structure model and interprets its parameters as a canonical choice of the relevant interest rate risk factors. In this way, the number of interest rate risk factors is substantially reduced and interest rate risk measurement is linked to the term structure model itself. The consideration of empirical interest rate data and the acceptance of the economical implausibility of persistently negative interest rates significantly below the cost of holding cash motivate the introduction of a truncated Gaussian process to simulate innovation in the future development of the parameters of the underlying term structure model. In a natural way this leads to mean-reverting interest rate behaviour and to countercyclical solvency capital requirements.
Subjects: 
interest rate risk
yield curve
truncated Gaussian process
Swiss Solvency Test
JEL: 
C51
C58
G22
G28
ISBN: 
978-3-86558-968-2
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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