In this paper we assess the joint impact of biometric and financial risk on the market valuation of life insurance liabilities. We consider a stylized, contingent claim based model of a life insurance company issuing participating contracts and subject to default risk, as pioneered by Briys and de Varenne (1994, 1997), and build on their model by explicitly introducing biometric risk and its components, namely diversifiable and systematic
risk. The contracts considered include pure endowments, deferred whole life annuities and guaranteed annuity options. Our results stress the predominance of systematic over diversifiable risk in determining fair participation rates. We investigate the interaction of contract design, market regimes and mortality scenarios, and show that, particularly for lifelong benefits, usually offered participation rates may not be sustainable even under moderate longevity improvements.
