Description: This paper defines Distributable Earnings as the generalized pricing and valuation framework for financial contracts containing the requirement to hold capital or reserves in support of the obligations. It examines the Market Value paradigm and its foundation arising from the pricing of fixed income securities. It reconciles these two methods, showing that market value methods ignore mandatory capital and reserve requirements, which carry both risk and cost. The paper makes the case for the Distributable Earnings framework, not Market Value, as the true basis for economic value for these financial contracts. Finally, it concludes that this framework must be employed in risk-management processes, else fail to recognize a significant source of risk.

Description: Actuarial appraisals are performed using discounted cash-flow models. Using local market insurance accounting standards, an appraisal model typically assumes annual after-tax distributable earnings that are repatriated to the investor. The various lines of business are modeled and validated individually and presented in separate sections of the appraisal report before being aggregated into a total company model. From Actuarial Considerations in Insurance Mergers and Acquisitions, M-FI03-1.

Description: The concept of transformed distributions is generalized in this paper. First the concepts of net premium intensity, loaded premium intensity and load generators arc introduced. Then transformed distributions are identified with premium intensity and hence the loaded premium is calculated from transformed distributions. Finally it is shown that this method of premimn calculation is arbitrage free and it incorporates the strengths of the utility approach.

Description: The values of life insurance and annuity liabilities move in opposite directions in response to a change in the underlying mortality. Natural hedging utilizes this to stabilize aggregate liability cash flows. Our study shows empirical evidence that insurers who utilize natural hedging also charge lower premiums than otherwise similar insurers. This indicates that insurers who are able to utilize natural hedging have a competitive advantage. In addition, we show how a mortality swap might be used to provide the benefits of natural hedging to a firm that writes only one of the lines of business.