A review of the Solvency II equity shock

The European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority (EIOPA) in 2019 published a study on market and credit risk modelling, observing that the equity risk shocks applied by the surveyed internal models are overall higher than those using the standard formula. In this paper, we conduct a review of the standard-formula shocks by providing a common basis of calibration for a one-year view, while also exploring a new approach that takes into account the long-term nature of the investments within insurance portfolios. Our approach for the estimation of the equity risk charge are based on the ideas of mean-reversion of the stock markets and multi-year holding of equity assets by insurance companies.