Quantile hedging pension payoffs: an analysis of investment incentives (Q1689028)

The author studies the use of a quantile hedging strategy to hedge a pension payoff. The investigation is based on partial hedging of defaultable contingent claims to examine whether the cost of the quantile hedging strategy may be reduced by adding a risky security in addition to bonds. The author considers a cash balance pension plan depending on both the interest rate risk and the mortality risk. The initial cost of a hedging strategy is determined by minimizing the cost of establishing a partial hedging portfolio so that the pension payoff is covered by the value of the portfolio with a certain probability level. This result is presented in Theorem 1. An expression for the initial cost of the hedging portfolio is also obtained. This result is presented in Proposition 3. The author obtains the expectation of the unhedged loss from a quantile hedge under a real-world probability. This result is presented in Proposition 4. Besides the minimal hedging cost for a certain probability of success, the author also considers the maximization of the probability of success for a quantile hedge given that the initial hedging cost does not exceed a certain level. An expression for the maximal probability of success is obtained and is presented in Proposition 6. Numerical examples to illustrate the applications of the results are presented in Section 4.