Description: When companies engage in risk management activities, they can be seen as modifying their distributions of future outcomes. Often, this takes the form of trading off a sure cost for a decrease in some potential risk of loss. Companies may carry out these activities with several goals in mind, such as reduction in earnings volatility or preservation of capital. This paper will demonstrate a method for evaluating possible strategies by dividing the effects on costs and risks into three tranches: earnings, impact and estate. The tranches can be associated with different interests of the various stakeholders. This trifurcation analysis can help to explain the risk-reward trade-offs of different risk treatment alternatives and can aid in risk-related decisionmaking.

Description: This paper charts the economic status of women moving from marriage to widowhood, and examines the changes in income and income sources that actually occur as women are widowed. The paper focuses, in particular, in the actual and potential role of pensions in preserving the economic status of widow. From Retirement Needs Framework, M-RS00-1.

Description: This paper sets forth challenges presented by an aging society with a focus on the situation of the individual and the implications for actuaries. From Retirement Needs Framework, M-RS00-1.

Description: People naturally observe risk in the form of the range of experienced gains and losses which is usually represented in statistical terms by standard deviation. In most cases, there are not enough observed values to reliably discern the true amount of losses that are possible in extreme situations. Statistical techniques that have long been applied to insurance company risks are being used to extrapolate from observed risk to extreme tails of the distribution of gains and losses. These processes are essentially an extrapolation from the “known” risk of volatility near the mean to “unknown” risk of extreme losses. “Fat tails” is a term often applied to risks where the likely losses in rare situations significantly exceeds the predictions of a Gaussian (“thin tailed”) distribution. This paper will look at the relationship between the observed risk and the extreme risk in statistical insurance r isk models and discuss how we might create a discussion among model users about the appropriateness of that relationship for specific types of risks.

Description: People naturally observe risk in the form of the range of experienced gains and losses which is usually represented in statistical terms by standard deviation. In most cases, there are not enough observed values to reliably discern the true amount of losses that are possible in extreme situations. Statistical techniques that have long been applied to insurance company risks are being used to extrapolate from observed risk to extreme tails of the distribution of gains and losses. These processes are essentially an extrapolation from the “known” risk of volatility near the mean to “unknown” risk of extreme losses. “Fat tails” is a term often applied to risks where the likely losses in rare situations significantly exceeds the predictions of a Gaussian (“thin tailed”) distribution. This paper will look at the relationship between the observed risk and the extreme risk in statistical insurance r isk models and discuss how we might create a discussion among model users about the appropriateness of that relationship for specific types of risks.

Description: This paper presents the output of in-house research on an emerging area of risk appetite management and our global implementation best practices. It intends to provide readers with detail implementation of risk appetite framework and assessment across an organization. It provides the conceptual risk appetite framework based model- developed by the author, implementation plan, and global best practices of a risk appetite assessment across an organization. It identifies the challenges and exceptions in the risk appetite assessment with an approach to manage it effectively, and helps organizations with cost-benefit analysis. It also includes an illustrative case study.

Description: Insurance company financial reporting and performance measurement are going through a significant transformation. Insurers are beginning to look at their business based on what many refer to as the 'economic value framework.' This paper examines some of the recent changes in financial reporting for insurance contracts and then explores whether sufficient evidence exists to conclude whether a company has created value simply by the sale of an insurance contract [gain at issue], and also reviews the necessary disclosures needed to build market trust of 'next-generation' financial reporting. Specific issues related to the economic view of capital also are examined as well as some of the problems existing economic capital approaches present to the industry. This paper proposes a performance measurement approach that incorporates the market’s view of risk and the level of compensation the market demands to accept that risk.

Description: This paper examines the social structures that are determining retirement for female Baby Boomers, and what can be done for these women to reflect the shift from shared responsibility to individual responsibility for retirement security. From Retirement Needs Framework, M-RS00-1.

Description: ERM has methodology for quantifying the risk to capital, but to determine optimal capital, the impact of capital level on firm value is needed. This gets into the realm of valuation. Also capital allocation provides risk quantification for business units, but comparing return among units is fundamentally a risk-pricing exercise. When considering risk pricing, optimal returns on allocated capital are not necessarily constant across business units. The current ERM methodology, as well as actuarial literature on valuation and pricing, are reviewed, and possible directions for application of pricing and valuation methods to risk management problems are outlined.

Description: The costly, time-consuming and complicated process of enterprise risk management (ERM) can be improved in many companies and made less tedious for managers by using reasonable data and templates obtained from peer group entities. The models used to calculate economic capital (EC) often underestimate its value because they do not consider decision-maker perception about risk. We assume here that managers, as the decision-makers, have appropriate business understanding and they can provide substantial information about risk characteristics regarding all business processes. Therefore we are focused, in this paper, on collecting data from managers across the different businesses to derive the appropriate knowledge about risky events, the importance of particular types of risk, the relationship between the risk outcomes and the level of risk control in a particular industry. We conclude that the collected data has a high potential for use as a benc hmarking reference and analysis for improving ERM models for individual businesses.