Description: This paper examines the pricing of catastrophe risk bonds. Catastrophe risk cannot be hedged by traditional securities. Therefore the pricing of catastrophe risk bonds requires an incomplete markets setting and this creates special difficulties in the pricing methodology. The paper briefly discusses the theory of equilibrium pricing and its relationship to the standard arbitrage-free valuation framework. Equilibrium pricing theory is used to develop a pricing method based on a model of the term structure of interest rates and a probability structure for the catastrophe risk. This pricing methodology can be used to assess the default spread on catastrophe risk bonds relative to traditional defaultable securities.

Description: This session at the SOA 1990 Hartford Spring Meeting presents an overview of foreign currency swaps, participants and growth in the market. Case studies are discussed.

Description: This paper explains the development of the credit derivative market, describes the most common types of credit derivatives, discusses how insurers can and do use these instruments and explains the role they played in the financial market turmoil of 2008.

Description: Presented at June 1996 Spring Meeting. Provides overview of modern pricing of assets such as derivatives. It includes theory and practical applications, particularly how they relate to insurance companies.

Description: Panelists at this session of the SOA 1998 Maui I Spring Meeting discuss the challenge of how to regulate and account for the growing number of derivative products in the context of their multiple applications.

Description: This session from the 2003 SOA Orlando Meeting covers credit derivatives and how they have evolved, credit-default swaps CDSs, the advantages and disadvantages of credit derivatives and the regulatory overview. From the Society of Actuaries Record, Volume 29, No. 3.

Description: This session from the 1984 SOA Atlanta Meeting is a teaching session of options and futures and discusses the basics of options and futures, hedging risks, the difference between hedging and arbitrage, taxation and representing policy features in terms of options.

Description: From a panel discussion session at the 2000 Valuation Actuary Symposium held in Washington DC, September 14-15, 2000 Overview of New York Regulation 163, including the limits on different types of derivative activities, the Derivative Use Plan required by New York, and the reporting and control requirements.

Description: A European call option pricing model similar to the Black-Scholes equation [1] is derived. Like the Black-Scholes equation, the model is based upon an assumption of a lognormal distribution of the price of a risky, non-dividend-paying security at a given point in the future. However, unlike Black-Scholes, the market's risk preference is recognized through a parameter that permits refinement of the model to agree either with experience or with future advances in the underlying theory.

Description: Insurance companies use derivatives to manage and mitigate risks that are inherent in their investment or liability portfolios, including traditional asset/liability matching, dynamic hedging and static hedging. The authors explore how Solvency II will influence life insurers’ hedging strategies.