When Indemnity Insurance Fails: Parametric Coverage under Binding Budget and Risk Constraints

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Avanzi, Benjamin, Falden, Debbie Kusch, Steffensen, Mogens
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Avanzi, Benjamin
Falden, Debbie Kusch
Steffensen, Mogens
author_facet Avanzi, Benjamin
Falden, Debbie Kusch
Steffensen, Mogens
contents In high-risk environments, traditional indemnity insurance is often unaffordable or ineffective, despite its well-known optimality under expected utility. We compare excess-of-loss indemnity insurance with parametric insurance within a common mean-variance framework, allowing for fixed costs, heterogeneous premium loadings, and binding budget constraints. Motivated by the disaster insurance and risk-sharing literature, we show that, once these realistic frictions are introduced, parametric insurance can yield higher welfare for risk-averse individuals, even under the same utility objective and without relying on behavioral assumptions. The welfare advantage arises precisely when indemnity insurance becomes impractical, and disappears once both contracts are unconstrained. Our results help reconcile classical insurance theory with the growing use of parametric risk transfer in high-risk settings.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2512_21973
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle When Indemnity Insurance Fails: Parametric Coverage under Binding Budget and Risk Constraints
Avanzi, Benjamin
Falden, Debbie Kusch
Steffensen, Mogens
General Economics
Economics
Optimization and Control
Risk Management
60G51, 93E20, 91G70, 62P05, 91B30
In high-risk environments, traditional indemnity insurance is often unaffordable or ineffective, despite its well-known optimality under expected utility. We compare excess-of-loss indemnity insurance with parametric insurance within a common mean-variance framework, allowing for fixed costs, heterogeneous premium loadings, and binding budget constraints. Motivated by the disaster insurance and risk-sharing literature, we show that, once these realistic frictions are introduced, parametric insurance can yield higher welfare for risk-averse individuals, even under the same utility objective and without relying on behavioral assumptions. The welfare advantage arises precisely when indemnity insurance becomes impractical, and disappears once both contracts are unconstrained. Our results help reconcile classical insurance theory with the growing use of parametric risk transfer in high-risk settings.
title When Indemnity Insurance Fails: Parametric Coverage under Binding Budget and Risk Constraints
topic General Economics
Economics
Optimization and Control
Risk Management
60G51, 93E20, 91G70, 62P05, 91B30
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.21973