Optimal dividend policy in an insurance company with contagious arrivals of claims

Abstract

In this paper we consider the optimal dividend problem for an insurance company whose surplus follows a classical Cramér-Lundberg process with a feature of self-exciting. A Hawkes process is applied so that the occurrence of a jump in the claims triggers more sequent jumps. We show that the optimal value function is a unique viscosity solution of the associated Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman equation with a given boundary condition and declare its concavity. We introduce a barrier curve strategy and verify its optimality. Finally, some numerical results are exhibited.