To help protect against potential losses from adverse deviations from expense projections, insurers may include a margin for expense projections during modeling. The relative size of a margin can be affected by a variety of product characteristics. An insurer tends to build a larger margin into a product's design if the product

experiences strong marketplace competition

transfers investment risk to the customer

provides shorter$-$term interest$-$rate guarantees for the customer

represents a high amount of investment risk for the insurer