Survivor Swaps
Kevin Dowd, David Blake, Andrew G.J Cairns and Paul Dawson
A survivor swap (SS) is an agreement to exchange cash flows in the future
based on the outcome of at least one survivor index. This article discusses
the possible uses of SSs as instruments for managing, hedging, and trading
mortality-dependent risks. SSs are especially useful for insurance companies,
but also offer other interested parties low beta avenues into the acquisition
of mortality risk exposure. The article also investigates vanilla SSs in some detail,
and suggests how their premiums and values might be determined in an
incomplete market setting.