Health Insurance Futures
Definition of "Health insurance futures"
One-year futures contract (standardized agreement between two parties to buy or sell a commodity or financial instrument on an organized futures exchange such as the CBOT within some future time period at a present stipulated price), traded at the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT), which would allow health insurance companies and self-insured employers to hedge their losses. The essential design of this contract is such that when actual claims exceed expected claims by amount "X," the futures contract would increase by the same amount "X." The financial instrument that forms the basis of this futures contract is an index that reflects the claims experience of ten health insurance companies. By buying futures contracts that will appreciate in the future as claims increase in the future, insurance companies and self-insured employers can profit from increasing futures prices through which they can offset their losses. Accordingly, by selling futures contracts that will decline in the future, these organizations can profit from decreasing futures prices that can be used to offset smaller cash flow. For example, if a health insurance company buys a futures contract for $40,000 and then sells it for $50,000, the company will recognize a profit of $10,000, which can be used to pay the higher than expected claims incurred. The cost effectiveness of hedging through the buying and selling of futures contracts depends on high correlations between expected claims payments and the futures contracts prices. If there is a low correlation between expected claims payments and the futures contracts prices, the less cost effective the hedge becomes. Thus, it is critical for the insurance company or the self-insured employer to establish the correlation between its block of business and the health insurance futures index.
Popular Insurance Terms
Enacted on April 1, 1997; provides protection against creditors for irrevocable trusts provided that the trust has a grantor who is a discretionary beneficiary. In order for the statute of ...
Requirement of the Internal Revenue Service that any dividend payments received are subject to a 20% withholding if the investor fails to furnish the dividend payer with the investor's ...
Concealment of the actual fact. For example, an insurance agent tells a prospective insured that a policy provides a particular benefit when in actual fact this benefit is not in the ...
Early type of no-fault automobile insurance developed by two law professors, Robert Keeton and Jeffrey O'Connell. Its basic premise is that for many accidents it is impossible to place the ...
Statistical procedure used to calculate a premium rate based on the loss experience of an insured group. Applied in group insurance, it is the opposite of manual rates. Here the premiums ...
Ruling that, under current tax law, an insurance company that has incurred a net income loss in a given year may charge that loss against its taxable income in a subsequent year. This ...
Form of insurance that insurance companies buy for their own protection, "a sharing of insurance." An insurer (the reinsured) reduces its possible maximum loss on either an individual risk ...
End of a defined time period that dividends become payable to the policyholder. ...
Financial technique for providing term death coverage for an entity. With this procedure: (1) an individual purchases an ordinary life insurance policy and completes an agreement with the ...
Have a question or comment?
We're here to help.