Hedging of Variable Annuities under Basis Risk

Abstract

Abstract I study dynamic hedging for variable annuities under basis risk. Basis risk, which arises from the imperfect correlation between the underlying fund and the proxy asset used for hedging, has a highly negative impact on the hedging performance. In this paper, I model the financial market based on correlated geometric Brownian motions and analyze the risk management for a pool of stylized GMAB contracts. I investigate whether the choice of a suitable hedging strategy can help to reduce the risk for the insurance company. Comparing several cross-hedging strategies, I observe very similar hedging performances. Particularly, I find that well-established but complex strategies from mathematical finance do not outperform simple and naive approaches in the context studied. Diversification, however, could help to reduce the adverse impact of basis risk.