We consider the problem of maximizing the expected utility of discounted dividend payments of an insurance company. The risk process, describing the insurance business of the company, is modeled as Brownian motion with drift. We mainly consider power utility and special emphasis is given to the limiting behavior when the coefficient of risk aversion tends to zero. We then find convergence of the corresponding dividend strategies to the classical case of maximizing the expected dividend payments.

We investigate a model of a corporation which faces constant liability payments and which can choose a production/business policy from an available set of control policies with different expected profits and risks. The objective is to maximize the expected present value of the total dividend distributions. The main purpose of this paper is to deal with the impact of constraints on business activities such as inability to completely eliminate risk (even at the expense of reducing the potential profit to zero) or when such a risk cannot exceed a certain level. We analyze the case in which there is no restriction on the dividend pay-out rates. By delicate analysis on the corresponding HamiltonJacobi -Bellman equation we compute explicitly the optimal return function and determine the optimal policy.

This paper presents a model for an insurance company that controls its risk and is allowed to invest in a financial market with just two assets - a risk free asset and a stock.

Abstract. We consider an optimal control problem of a property insurance company with proportional reinsurance strategy. The insurance business brings in catastrophe risk, such as earthquake and flood. The catastrophe risk could be partly reduced by reinsurance. The management of the company controls the reinsurance rate and dividend payments process to maximize the expected present value of the dividends before bankruptcy. This is the first time to consider the catastrophe risk in property insurance model, which is more realistic. We establish the solution of the problem by the mixed singularregular control of jump diffusions. We first derive the optimal retention ratio, the optimal dividend payments level, the optimal return function and the optimal control strategy of the property insurance company, then the impacts of the catastrophe risk and key model parameters on the optimal return function and the optimal control strategy of the company are discussed. MSC(2000): Primary91B30,91B70,91B28;Secondary60H10,60H30.

We consider a collective insurance risk model with a compound Cox claim process, in which the evolution of a claim intensity is described by a stochastic differential equation driven by a Brownian motion. The insurer operates in a financial market consisting of a risk-free asset with a constant force of interest and a risky asset which price is driven by a Lévy noise. We investigate two optimization problems. The first one is the classical mean-variance portfolio selection. In this case the efficient frontier is derived. The second optimization problem, except the mean-variance terminal objective, includes also a running cost penalizing deviations of the insurer’s wealth from a specified profit-solvency target which is a random process. In order to find optimal strategies we apply techniques from the stochastic control theory.

We study a model of a corporation which has the possibility to choose various production/business policies with different expected profits and risks. In the model there are restrictions on the dividend distribution rates as well as restrictions on the risk the company can undertake. The objective is to maximize the expected present value of the total dividend distributions. We outline the corresponding Hamilton–Jacobi–Bellman equation, compute explicitly the optimal return function and determine the optimal policy. As a consequence of these results, the way the dividend rate and business constraints affect the optimal policy is revealed. In particular, we show that under certain relationships between the constraints and the exogenous parameters of the random processes that govern the returns, some business activities might be redundant, that is, under the optimal policy they will never be used in any scenario. 1. Introduction. In