Description: This note develops the optimality of the put option as a hedging strategy. For an investor who owns a stock, he can buy a put option to hedge against the downside risk of the stock price. In this short note, we ask two questions with the hedge strategy of the put option. First, whether the investor is better off with the hedging strategy? Second, if the investor is better off with the hedging strategy, whether it is the optimal hedging plan? Our result shows that in a risk averse world an investor will maximize his utility with buying the put option as a hedge strategy.

Description: Presentation from the Actuarial Research Conference describing risk management at a leading Canadian Bank.

Description: In this paper we study the pricing of financial options and contingent claims. We show that two time-honored concepts in actuarial science - the Esscher transform and the adjustment coefficient - are efficient tools for pricing many options and derivative securities if the logarithms of the prices of the primitive securities are certain stochastic processes with stationary and independent increments. We also study the pricing of American options on two stocks without expiration date and with payoff functions which are homogeneous with respect to the two stock prices.

Description: This is the abstract of the paper A Space Marching Finite Difference Algorithm for Valuing American. In this paper, the author considers the problem of valuating American options written on assets that pay continuous dividends with unknown optimal exercise boundary. The numerical solution of the associated free boundary value problem is investigated. This research has been partialy supported by the actuarial faculty fund at the Ohio State University.

Description: In 1993, the Chicago Board of Trade introduced a futures contract on a financial index that reflects the insurance claims emerging from catastrophes in a portfolio of policies. This article presents a valuation formula for the contract, under the assumption that catastrophes emerge as a Poisson process over time and that the claims from each catastrophe emerge as a Compound Poisson process. The formula is developed by taking conditional expectations with respect to a history of information that includes knowledge about the time of the catastrophes.

Description: This paper examines the problem of hedging foreign exchange risk across multiple countries using currency options. The profit target requirement is formulated as a stochastic constraint in the context of a binomial lattice. Models are presented for European options. In a numerical example, five currency options are selected, allowing for long or short positions, depending on the target value.

Description: This paper presents a new methodology for obtaining fast algorithms and closed form solutions for pricing callable bonds in continuous time models. Results are directly applicable to regulatory scenario testing, immunization and market value accounting.

Description: New Zealand is about to launch its first variable annuity with guaranteed lifetime withdrawal benefits. The product design is mindful of the lessons from the financial crisis in the United States, Europe and Japan.

Description: Presentation discussing modeling of daily and hourly rainfall, both occurrence and amount. These distributions would be needed to price derivative or insurance contracts involving rainfall amounts.