Description: This article discusses the Insurer Solvency Assessment – Towards a Global Framework report prepared by the IAA Insurer Solvency Assessment Working Party WP. The conclusions of the report are consistent with the three pillar approach to the regulation of financial service entities that is reflected in the Basel Accord for the regulation of banks internationally. The pillars are: Pillar I: Minimum financial requirements. Pillar II: Supervisory review process. Pillar III: Measures to foster market discipline.

Description: This article discusses the risk management approaches of insurers. The author described some of the current practices of the total return approach, how the total return approach is used in managing risks as a process, and a model that takes future sales into consideration and determines the appropriate fair valuation method of an ongoing business.

Description: Life and annuity markets around the world have seen increasingly complex investment-combined products, including universal life, fixed indexed annuities, variable annuities with a wide variety of guaranteed benefits and indexed variable annuities. Insurance companies are facing unprecedented exposure to financial risks in addition to traditional mortality and longevity risks. The risk assessment and modeling for such complex designs by conventional methods often focus heavily on their market competitiveness and profitability. However, there seems to be a lack of quantifiable and systematic approaches to assess investment risks associated with investment combined products. The objective of the proposed work is to develop a framework for quantifying and analyzing various forms of contractual designs and showcase different techniques to assess the trade-off between competitive contractual designs and their practical implications regarding the difficulty of risk management.

Description: Complete issue of the August 2014 Risk Management newsletter.

Description: Risk management techniques do not include system science. System science requires that the uncertainty of the world is incorporated into the results. The articles explains the difference between risk and uncertainty. Learn how risk practices create an overoptimistic view of future outcomes.

Description: This paper applies the research in Prospect Theory of Kahneman and Tversky to explain why sales of annuities lag sales of life insurance products. The author theorizes that life insurance is easier to sell because customers perceive themselves to be in the domain of losses, while potential annuity customers perceive themselves to be in the domain of gains. Kahneman and Tversky showed us that people are mostly risk averse in the domain of gains and risk seeking in the domain of losses. Purchase of an annuity or life product is a risky investment. Customers will find it easier to take the risk in the life insurance domain of losses than the annuity domain of gains. The author then proposes a hybrid life annuity product that might address both mortality and longevity risk in one product that would allow both products to be more competitive than stand-alone products.

Description: The management of The Guardian Life Insurance Company of America Guardian decided during 2006 to perform an economic capital EC analysis, with results to be delivered in the spring of 2007. A second generation EC analysis EC 2.0 was conducted from fall 2007 through spring 2008. This article describes EC 2.0.

Description: Description of the increased gamma of the liabilities of a portfolio of variable annuities. Discussion of the sensitivity of gamma due to changes in policyholder behavior.

Description: This article discusses the pending book entitled 'Dynamic Risk Modeling Handbook.' The proposed scope and outline of the book is reviewed. This is a revision of the 'DFA Handbook' which was published in 1995.

Description: This article describes an initiative of the Chief Risk Officer Forum to perform a study to benchmark internal models, so as to discuss the admissibility of these models for regulatory purposes in the context of Solvency II. The results of and reactions to that study are discussed.