Description: This article describes seven results from behavioral finance that actuaries may find useful: heuristics, the endowment effect, loss aversion, prospect theory, satisficing, strategic thinking and agent-based modeling.

Description: Is Risk/Return a sound tool for decision-making? No. It is not consistent, not objective, distorts decision and degrades governance. Why? What shall we do then?

Description: Is Risk/Return a sound tool for decision-making? No. It is not consistent, not objective, distorts decision and degrades governance. Why? What shall we do then?

Description: Using basic actuarial principles to develop a reasonable spending budget and to keep spending/savings on track to meet financial objectives.

Description: Increasing uncertainties and volatility in financial as well as real goods markets increasingly reveal that controlling systems based on deterministic and pseudo-exact values are insufficiently eligible to manage the business activities. This raises the question how management systems can be modified to generate the adequate management impulses in volatile periods. Risk management deals from identifying, evaluating and aggregating chances and risks, which again determine the potential fluctuation range of relevant performance indicators. Everyday corporate life shows that risk management is considered important; but the corresponding processes to identify, evaluate and report chances and risks are seldom part of established decision criteria. This “paradox” lets assume that risks are managed in various differing and unsystematic ways. The combination of traditional controlling methods and risk management is not primarily a methodological challenge. The behavior of the whole organization, practiced over a long-year period, has to be transferred into a new corporate culture of transparent dealing with chances and risks. This paper describes the necessary change management process, which has to come along with necessary methodological modifications.

Description: We discussed impacts of procrastination and strategies to harness the power of inertia to aid individuals in their pursuit of future financial well-being.

Description: This article describes behavioral finance and its relevance in identifying analytics and processes suitable for a control environment for the actuarial aspects of an insurance company.

Description: Fiduciaries play a vital role in the financial health of a pension plan. How they carry out their duties is a question of increasing interest to beneficiaries, regulators, shareholders and taxpayers. Having a clear, logical and well-documented risk management process in place can make a big difference.

Description: The article is Part 1 of two articles that provide a case study for the development of a profitability and risk dashboard. The sample dashboard provides distilled information regarding actual to expected (A/E) ratios for key risks, agent quality scores and customer value scores. The dashboard would also provide the value of new business written, surplus strain, debit balances, and expected losses on debit balances at different levels, down to the agent level. A product mix index is provided, together with visual comparisons of key metrics to the company's business plan. The Part 2 article will add information to the dashboard regarding risk margins, target capital, and company value.

Description: We discussed impacts of procrastination and strategies to harness the power of inertia to aid individuals in their pursuit of future financial well-being.