1.2 Life insurance

The risk of an individual insurance contract lies in the occurrence of the insured event. The occurrence is considered random and therefore unpredictable. The risk in life insurance outside of Austria is of minor importance due to the low volume (approx. 20%). Various risks exist in Austria, particularly in classic life insurance. The insurance company takes on this risk for a corresponding premium paid by the policyholder. When calculating the premium, the actuary refers to the following carefully selected bases of calculation:

• Interest: The actuarial interest is set so low that it can be produced with certainty in each year.
• Mortality: The probabilities of dying are deliberately and carefully calculated for each type of insurance.
• Costs: These are calculated in such a way that the costs incurred by the policy can be permanently covered by the premium.

Carefully selecting the bases of calculation gives rise to scheduled profits, an appropriate amount of which is credited to the policyholders as part of profit sharing.

The calculation of the premium is also based on the acceptance of a large, homogenous inventory of independent risks, so that the randomness inherent in an individual insurance policy is balanced out by the law of large numbers.

The following risks exist for a life insurance company:

• The bases of calculation prove to be insufficient despite careful selection.
• Random fluctuations prove disadvantageous for the insurer.
• The policyholder exercises certain implicit options to his advantage.

The risks of the insurer can be roughly divided into actuarial and financial risks.

Capital and risk insurance

UNIQA's portfolio consists primarily of long-term insurance policies. Short-term assurances payable at death play a minor role.

In the following table, the number of insurance policies is divided by rate groups and insured sum categories; included here are the policies of the companies UNIQA Personenversicherung, Raiffeisen Versicherung, Salzburger Landes-Versicherung and CALL DIRECT Versicherung AG.

Mortality

Insurance policies with an assurance character implicitly include a safety surcharge on the risk premium in that the premium calculation is based on an accounting table (the Austrian Mortality Table for 1990/92 or for 2000/02).

Using risk selection (health examinations) means that the mortality probabilities of the portfolio are consistently smaller than those of the overall population; in addition, the gradual advancement of mortality means that the real mortality probabilities are consistently smaller than the values shown in the accounting table.

Homogeneity and independence of insurance risks

An insurance company takes great pains to compose a portfolio of the most homogenous, independent risks possible, in accordance with the classic, deterministic approach to calculating premiums. Because this is virtually impossible in practice, a considerable risk arises for the insurer due to random fluctuations, in particular from the outbreak of epidemic illnesses, as not only could the calculated mortality probabilities prove to be too low, the independence of the risks can also no longer be assumed.

Cumulative risks contained in the portfolio can be reduced by using reinsurance contracts. As the first reinsurer, UNIQA Holding operates with a retained risk of € 200,000 per insured life; the excesses are mostly reinsured with Swiss Re, Munich Re and Gen Re. A catastrophic excess (CAT-XL) contract is also held with Swiss Re, although it excludes losses resulting from epidemics.

Antiselection

The portfolios of Raiffeisen Versicherung AG and UNIQA Personenversicherung AG contain large inventories of risk insurance policies with a premium adjustment clause. This allows the insurer to raise the premiums in case of a (less probable) worsening of the mortality behaviour. However, this presents the danger of possible antiselection behaviour, meaning that policies for good risks tend to be terminated while worse ones remain in the portfolio.

Retirement annuities

Mortality

The reduction of mortality probabilities represents a large uncertainty for retirement annuities. The gradual advancement of mortality as a result of medical progress and changed lifestyles is virtually impossible to extrapolate.

Attempts to predict this effect were made when producing the generation tables. However, such tables only exist for the Austrian population, and this data cannot be applied to other countries. Moreover, the past shows that the effect of these changes was seriously underestimated so that subsequent reservations had to be made for retirement annuity contracts.

Antiselection

The right to choose annuity pensions for deferred retirement annuities also results in antiselection. Only those policyholders who feel very healthy choose the annuity payment; all others choose partial or full capital payment. In this way, the pension portfolio tends to consist of mostly healthier people, i.e. worse risks than the population average.

This phenomenon is countered by corresponding modifications to the retirement mortality tables. A further possibility exists in the requirement that the intention to exercise the right to choose annuity payments must be announced no later than one year in advance of the expiration.

Financial risks

The actuarial interest that may be used in the calculation for writing new business is based on the maximum interest rate ordinance and currently amounts to 1.75% per annum (“Lebensaktie”, “Zukunftsplan”) or 2.25% per annum (other life insurance policies). However, the portfolio also contains older contracts with actuarial interest of up to 4.0% per annum, while the average rate for the portfolio is 2.71% (2009: 2.75%).

As these interest rates are guaranteed by the insurance company, the financial risk lies in not being able to generate these returns. As classic life insurance predominantly invests in interest bearing titles (bonds, loans etc.), the unpredictability of long-term interest rate trends is the most significant financial risk for a life insurance company. The interest risk weighs especially heavily on retirement annuities, as these are extremely long-term policies.

The interest risk functions in the following ways:

Investment and reinvestment risk

Premiums received in the future must be invested at an interest rate guaranteed at the time the policy was taken out. However, it is entirely possible that no corresponding titles are available at the time the premium is received. In the same way, future income must be reinvested at the actuarial interest rate.

Ratio of assets to liabilities

For practical reasons, the goal of duration matching cannot be fully achieved on the assets and liability side. The duration of the assets is 5.1 years (2009: 4.9), while for liabilities it is considerably longer. This creates a duration gap, which means that the ratio of assets to liabilities reduces as interest rates fall.

Value of implicit options

Life insurance policies contain implicit options that can be exercised by the policyholder. While the possibilities of partial or full buy-back or the partial or full release of premiums in fact represent financing options, these options are not necessarily exercised as a consequence of correct, financially rational decisions. However, in the case of a mass buy-back, e.g. due to an economic crisis, this represents a considerable risk to the insurance company.

The question of whether a capital or annuity option should be exercised is, in addition to subjective motives of the policyholder, also characterised by financially rational considerations; depending on the final interest level, a policyholder will opt for the capital or the annuity, so that these options represent a considerable (cash) value for the policyholder, and therefore a corresponding risk for the insurer.

The guarantee of an annuitising factor represents another financial risk. Here, the insurance company guarantees to annuitise a sum unknown in advance (namely the value of the fund shares at maturity or for classic life insurance the value of the insured sum including profit-sharing) in accordance with a mortality table (the risk involved is not exclusively financial) and an interest rate set at the time the policy is taken out.

Besides these actuarial and financial risks, the cost risk must also be specified. The insurer guarantees that it will deduct only the calculated costs for the entire term of the policy. The business risk here is that the cost premiums are insufficient (e.g. due to cost increases resulting from inflation).