Super-Fast Computation for the Three-Asset Equity-Linked Securities Using the Finite Difference Method

Abstract

In this article, we propose a super-fast computational algorithm for three-asset equity-linked securities (ELS) using the finite difference method (FDM). ELS is a very popular investment product in South Korea. There are one-, two-, and three-asset ELS. The three-asset ELS is the most popular financial product among them. FDM has been used for pricing the one- and two-asset ELS because it is accurate. However, the three-asset ELS is still priced using the Monte Carlo simulation (MCS) due to the curse of dimensionality for FDM. To overcome the limitation of dimension for FDM, we propose a systematic non-uniform grid with an explicit Euler scheme and an optimal implementation of the algorithm. The computational time is less than 6 s. We perform standard ELS option pricing and compare the results from the fast FDM with the ones from MCS. The computational results confirm the superiority and practicality of the proposed algorithm.