Hi All, I am looking to analyse Life Insurance Companies in growth economies (India, China etc.) and facing with the following challenges
- Since the products are long-tenor, accounting is completely opaque as high acquisition costs are expended right away instead of amortizing over life. How should one see P&L profits here?
- Sell-side is valuing this business by projecting value of new business (VNB) and giving a multiple to it - However, the VNB calculation is rather strange as it calculated as PV of cash flows of new business written that year discounted at risk free rate. It seems to me that cash flows should be discounted at cost of equity (and not risk free rate) to come to VNB. What is the right framework?
- Life Insurance companies don't talk about ROCE, ROA - how does one say if this business is good or bad without knowing its capital efficiency?
- Various types of products have different capital requirements - how does understand which is the most lucrative product?
- Would be great if someone could share material on evaluating life insurance business (books, papers, primers)
Edit 1:
Some of the things I've found which helps answer some questions I posted
http://www.fbv.kit.edu/symposium/8th/papers/darbellay.pdf
http://www.ordineattuari.it/media/3227/ONA_FVG_EV_752.pdf (if someone know italian and can help with the last few pages, would appreciate it)
https://www.actuary.org/sites/default/files/files/publications/Practice_Note_Practice_note_to_assist_actuaries_working_for_life_insurance_companies_with_the_calculation_of_embedded_values_may2009.pdf