Weak limits of random coefficient autoregressive processes and their application in ruin theory

Abstract

We prove that a large class of discrete-time insurance surplus processes converge weakly to a generalized Ornstein–Uhlenbeck process, under a suitable re-normalization and when the time-step goes to 0. Motivated by ruin theory, we use this result to obtain approximations for the moments, the ultimate ruin probability and the discounted penalty function of the discrete-time process.