Description: The author speculates that the world wide promulgation of fair value accounting standards will make the normal shape of the rate curve downward sloping rather than the upward sloping curve that is normally seen. The author explains why this trend is expected.

Description: This article discusses facts and issues related to the selection of a stock’s price distribution.

Description: Suspension of 30-year Treasury auctions will have minimal impact on bond market structure in the near term, but over the mid- to long-term, consequences could be profound. This article discusses that impact the suspension of the 30-year treasury will have.

Description: All things considered, caution needs to be applied to the use of so-called “standard” mortality tables. Sharpening up these blunt estimates by using individual assumptions reveals material differences in the structure of longevity, both between plans and within plans.

Description: U.S. bond markets have undergone dramatic changes due to the 2008 Global Financial Crisis (GFC) and the COVID-19 pandemic. In taking a retrospective view, we can see that bond markets, viewed through the lens of major bond indices, have been evolving for quite some time. Within this paper, TD Asset Management Inc. (TDAM) will explore underlying changes that have occurred within the U.S. Corporate Bond Index, a sub-component of the larger U.S. investment grade bond market, over the past decade. We will highlight key structural changes that have occurred within bond markets and why they are noteworthy

Description: A look at the COVID-19 crisis in 2020, and how it differs from both prior financial crises and pandemics. The COVID-19 pandemic gives actuaries an opportunity to assess different ways risk may interact, and thereby adjust the profession’s work for the future.

Description: This article provides a retrospective on investment risk management while highlighting actuarial tools used by portfolio risk managers.

Description: This article is an overview of the Financial Risk Managment of Insurance Enterprises course. The course incorporates financial risk management, asset pricing models and all risks facing an insurance company. The basics are then applied to asset-liability management and valuation.

Description: The article discusses C1 risks in five areas: 1 the economics of risk, 2 portfolio optimization, 3 policy, 4 risk interaction and 5 institutional aspects of C1 risk.

Description: The investment risk taken by a pension fund comprises strategic risk and active risk. This paper discusses the relative merits of these two types of risk to the pension fund, possible rationales for the levels of strategic and active risk typically adopted mechanisms for capturing manager skill without taking on equity risk, and issues in setting liability-based benchmarks for investment managers