EVM Notes—November 30, 2006

Attendees
Bob Guth (Leader), Tom Edwalds, Cliff Angstman, Kevin Strobel, Bernie Rabinowitz

Secretary for call: Kevin Strobel

Web liaison: Kevin Strobel

1. Some updates to the October minutes were discussed; they will be inserted into the minutes in brackets. We will make these available on the web site soon.
2. Our proposed session for the ERM Symposium was not accepted. There was some confusion over the deadline for submissions, and we believe ours was late.
3. Our web site needs an overhaul; the information is out of date. Bob will work on some proposals for updating this content. Also, we would like a more prominent link from the SOA site; Kevin will contact the SOA to find out how we might go about improving this situation.
4. Tom provided an update on the influenza project. Two Delphi studies are being completed—one on differences between mortality of the insured population and the general population, and the other on the response of asset values to an epidemic. We discussed the application of Delphi techniques to the analysis of extreme events as a whole. Bernie will follow up with the Futurism section and see if someone from that group might be willing to join a future call from our group to provide a comparison of alternative methods for this type of study.
5. At a future meeting, we expect to have a discussion on Harry Panjer's book. Max is checking on the availability of information from the Embrechts seminar. We are still hoping for input from that seminar as we view it to be a valuable resource.
6. We discussed the development of a proposal for a budget for the ERM Risk Poll which was discussed in our October 12 meeting. Bob will follow-up on this. The group agrees that we should place a high priority on pushing this forward.
7. Tom suggested that we try to identify some extreme risks that are being discussed in academia and study from an actuarial perspective, using the recent influenza study as a successful role model. What might we discuss? Elevated earthquake activity? Global warming? Perhaps we could use the poll mentioned in item 6 to help pick a topic to focus upon.
8. Next meeting: we will poll participants in early January.