Setting interest rates and option budgets for annuities and life insurance products.
Rate Setting Program
Setting (interest) rates and option budgets for annuities can be a highly stressful and complicated task, especially for a large assortment of annuity products. Larger product assortments have become instrumental to growing and defending market share. Unlike other industries, a large assortment of annuity products is not very difficult to manufacture. On the contrary, a large assortment of annuity products projects an image of experience and financial maturity, which customers (retirees) admire.
Systematic Process
Setting interest rates is typically a systematic process at most insurers. This process involves the use of manual discretion overlaid on systematic rules to combine various inputs such as:
Expected asset returns
Option (Hedge) cost
Realized policyholder returns (renewing policies)
Competitive landscape
Health of general account
Surrender Charge and Term
Setting interest rates and option budgets for a large number of annuity and life insurance product lines, each having multiple new money and renewing policy cohorts can quickly grow into a tedious process, disrupting the focus of management from more value-accretive tasks.