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Validation of aggregated risks models

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 December 2017

Michel Dacorogna
Affiliation:
DEAR-Consulting, Scheuchzerstrasse 160, 8057 Zurich, Switzerland
Laila Elbahtouri
Affiliation:
SCOR, 5 Avenue Kléber, 75795 Paris, France
Marie Kratz*
Affiliation:
ESSEC Business School, CREAR Risk Research Center, Avenue Bernard Hirsch, BP50105, 95021 Cergy-Pontoise, France
*
*Correspondence to: ESSEC Business School, CREAR Risk Research Center, Avenue Bernard Hirsch, BP50105, 95021 Cergy-Pontoise, France. E-mail: kratz@essec.edu
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Abstract

Validation of risk models is required by regulators and demanded by management and shareholders. Those models rely in practice heavily on Monte Carlo (MC) simulations. Given their complexity, the convergence of the MC algorithm is difficult to prove mathematically. To circumvent this problem and nevertheless explore the conditions of convergence, we suggest an analytical approach. Considering standard models, we compute, via mixing techniques, closed form formulas for risk measures as Value-at-Risk (VaR) VaR or Tail Value-at-Risk (TVaR) TVaR on a portfolio of risks, and consequently for the associated diversification benefit. The numerical convergence of MC simulations of those various quantities is then tested against their analytical evaluations. The speed of convergence appears to depend on the fatness of the tail of the marginal distributions; the higher the tail index, the faster the convergence. We also explore the behaviour of the diversification benefit with various dependence structures and marginals (heavy and light tails). As expected, it varies heavily with the type of dependence between aggregated risks. The diversification benefit is also studied as a function of the risk measure, VaR or TVaR.

Information

Type
Paper
Copyright
© Institute and Faculty of Actuaries 2017 
Figure 0

Figure 1 Convergence of the TVaR of Sn at 99.5% for α=1.1, 2, 3 from left to right, for an aggregation factor n=2, 10, 100 from up to down. The purple line corresponds to the analytical value and the green plots are the average values obtained from the Monte Carlo (MC) simulations. The y-scale gives the normalised TVaR (TVaRn/n) and is the same for each column.

Figure 1

Table 1 Relative errors (when comparing results obtained by Monte Carlo and analytical ones) of the TVaRn and the diversification benefit Dn for Sn, at 99.5% and for various α, as a function of the aggregation factor n computed with one million simulations.

Figure 2

Figure 2 Convergence of the diversification benefit of Sn (associated with TVaR at 99.5%) for α=1.1, 2, 3 (from left to right), for an aggregation factor n=2, 10, 100 (from up to down). The purple lines are for the analytical values and the green ones are the average values obtained from the Monte Carlo (MC) simulations. The y-scale is the same for all the graphs, for fair comparison.

Figure 3

Figure 3 Convergence of the normalised TVaR of Sn, TVaRn/n, at 99.5% for c=1, $\tau {\equals}{1 \over 2}$ and θ=2, for an aggregation factor n=2, 10, 100 from left to right. The purple line corresponds to the analytical value and the green plots are the average values obtained from the Monte Carlo (MC) simulations. The y-axis is the same for the three plots.

Figure 4

Figure 4 Convergence of the diversification benefit Dn of Sn (associated with TVaR at 99.5%) for c=1, $\tau {\equals}{1 \over 2}$ and θ=2, for an aggregation factor n=2, 10, 100 from left to right. The purple lines are for the analytical values and the green ones are the average values obtained from the Monte Carlo (MC) simulations. The y-axis is the same for the three plots, for fair comparison.

Figure 5

Figure 5 Plot of the diversification benefit $D_{n}^{{\asterisk}} $ (y-axis) as a function of n (x-axis), for VaRκ with κ=99.5%. The curves from bottom to up correspond, respectively, to Pareto (α=2)-Clayton (θ=1/2), Gauss-Gauss (Clayton; r=0.42), Gauss-Gauss (Gumbel; r=0.39), Weibulll (τ=1/2)-Gumbel (θ=2), independent Pareto (α=2) and Gauss models.

Figure 6

Table 2 Analytical diversification benefit of Sn, Dn and $D_{n}^{{\asterisk}} $, at 99.5% as a function of the risk measures TVaR and VaR, respectively, and of the aggregation factor n.