Description: The editorial cautions that while the development of more sophisticated models may increase efficiency, it is important to consider the very real risk management costs associated with the increased complexity, efficiency and overconfidence in the predictive power of models.

Description: An exploration of Canada’s federal regulator of financial institutions (OSFI) and its more formal assessment of the actuarial function of insurers.

Description: The author uses football to demonstrate the axiom of downside risk, and how it can be applied in business situations when considering whether to use a conservative or aggressive approach.

Description: Panelists report on the status of activities by national associations in regard to risk-based capital requirements for health insurers. From the Record of the Society of Actuaries, Vol. 24, No. 2.

Description: A presentation at the Actuarial Research Conference in August 2006 in Montreal. This paper discusses the Basel VaR Value at Risk test of a bank's VaR model. It proposes an alternative, Quality Control of Risk Measures QCRM Hypothesis test. The alternative is more likely to reject an incorrect VaR model.

Description: To deal with future correlation crises, the author suggests the implementation of ‘’quanlitative analysts’’ (‘Quanls’) in the enterprise risk management (ERM) process: risk managers who are able to lead interdisciplinary ERM studies from a jointly qualitative and quantitative point of view, with an emphasis on dynamics.

Description: The ORSA should be more than a compliance requirement -- its process should be an integral element of a company's governance and risk and strategic planning process used by both management and the board on a regular feedback loop basis. Similar to that used for ERM, it along with a carefully constructed set of metrics should serve as the springboard to be used to identify, control and mitigate short- and long-term risks, as well as to enable exploitation of opportunities to add shareholder and policyholder value. Risk can represent an opportunity from which insurers can leverage their knowledge and risk management capabilities to find and maintain a competitive edge. Part of the essay collection "Risk Metrics for Decision Making and ORSA"

Description: This paper considers the question of whether the growth in the size of financial statements witnessed over the last several years has yielded an increase in the quality of disclosure around issues of financial risk and to what extent this disclosure is satisfying the perceived needs of readers of the financial statements, as represented by the investment analyst community.

Description: The U.K. Pension Protection Fund (PPF) was established in April 2005 to protect the pensions of members of U.K. private sector defined benefit pension schemes that have insufficient assets and whose corporate sponsor fails. The Fund takes over the pension scheme assets and assumes responsibility for the payment of compensation to the former members of the scheme. The PPF is funded by a levy on the population of eligible schemes. To improve its ERM framework, the PPF has undertaken a reverse stress testing exercise. This analysis provided the organization with new insights into its risk profile, the scenarios leading to the PPF’s potential “failure,” and interactions between these scenarios. This paper discusses the principles and objectives of reverse stress testing in the special case of the PPF and then illustrates the application of complex system science techniques for the purpose of reverse stress testing.

Description: The letter from the editor discusses some recent loss events driven by model error and provides an overview of the articles in this issue of Risk Management.