State Space Modeling of Mortgage Default Rates Under Natural Hazard Shocks

Mortgage default rates, on the one hand, serve as a measure of economic health to support decision-making by insurance companies and, on the other hand, are a key risk factor in the asset-liability management (ALM) practice, as mortgage-related assets constitute a significant portion of insurers’ investment portfolios. This article studies the relationship between economic losses due to natural hazards and mortgage default rates. The topic is greatly relevant to the insurance industry, as excessive insurance losses from natural hazards can lead to a surge in mortgage defaults, creating compounded challenges for insurers. To this end, we apply a state-space modeling (SSM) approach to decouple the effect of natural hazard losses on mortgage default rates, after controlling for other economic determinants through the inclusion of latent variables. Moreover, we consider a sliced variant of the classical SSM to capture the subtle relationship that only emerges when natural hazard losses are sufficiently high. Our model verifies the significance of this relationship and provides insights into how natural hazard losses manifest as increased mortgage default rates.