Description: The purpose of this paper is to study mortality-based securities, such as mortality bonds and swaps, and to price the proposed mortality securities. The focus is on individual annuity data, although some of the modeling techniques could be applied to other lines of annuity or life insurance.

Description: We devise an approach, using tobit models for modeling annuity lapse rates. The approach is based on data provided by the Society of Actuaries’ Risk Management Task Force. Kim [2005a] models annuity lapse rates using a logit model and the same US data (he also used Korean data separately). We find that the tobit model is a more than suitable approach for all levels of the explanatory variables including interest rates, unemployment rates, and GDP growth rates. Specifically, policyholder behavior in the tail of the distribution of lapse rates is explained as well as it is in the normal range of lapse rates.