Description: A number of insurance companies have recently implemented, or are in the process of implementing, economic risk capital. These programs are being implemented because of concerns with the existing regulatory and accounting frameworks and/or companies' desire to have a capital framework which is more consistent with their risk profile. From the Record of the Society of Actuaries, Volume 30, No. 2, Spring Meeting, San Antonio, TX, June 14-15, 2004, Session 47PD.

Description: Panelists discuss economic capital, capital modeling, and hedge modeling, especially for guaranteed living benefits [GLBs] on variable annuities. Session 34PD of the 2005 Valuation Actuary Symposium.

Description: Actuaries and rating agencies increasingly believe that the NAIC's formulaic required capital standard does not adequately address a company's insurance, economic market and credit, reporting and pricing risk structure. Economic capital, based upon a stochastic evaluation of a company's total risk exposures, presents a new approach for accurately gauging a company's exposure to risk. Attendees learn what economic capital is, how it is calculated, what it tells company management about risk exposures and how it can serve as a valuable risk-adjusted measurement tool. From the Record of the Society of Actuaries, Volume 29, No. 1: Washington D.C. Spring Meeting, May 29–30, 2003, Session 24OF.

Description: Describes how the mantra of 'tax cuts will pay for themselves" along with the political unwillingness to cut spending (extant since the 1980s), has led to this increasing debt problem in the U.S., reaching $17 trillion at time of writing. Other countries are behaving in a similar fashion, and it can be only a matter of time before the globe may reach another crisis, this time based on excessive government debt coupled with fewer interested investors.