A robust asset–liability management framework for investment products with guarantees

This paper suggests a robust asset–liability management framework for investment products with guarantees, such as guaranteed investment contracts and equity-linked notes. Stochastic programming and robust optimization approaches are introduced to deal with data uncertainty in asset returns and interest rates. The statistical properties of the probability distributions of uncertain parameters are incorporated in the model through appropriately selected symmetric and asymmetric uncertainty sets. Practical data-driven approaches for implementation of the robust models are also discussed. Numerical results using generated and real market data are presented to illustrate the performance of the robust asset–liability management strategies. The robust investment strategies show better performance in unfavorable market regimes than traditional stochastic programming approaches. The effectiveness of robust investment strategies can be improved by calibrating carefully the shape and the size of the uncertainty sets for asset returns.