Description: A discussion of the possible effort required and impacts resulting from the implementation of C3 Phase II for establishing risk-based capital for variable annuities. This article will describe practical considerations gleaned from actual valuation calculations recently performed by a consulting firm.

Description: This paper develops a new technique, which allows the analyst to maximally use all thte historical interest rate information available in forecasting interest rates. Interest rates' daily change do not follow a stationary random process over long time periods. Instead, the process is comprised of stationary periods, each a few years long, with relatively short transitional periods between different stationary periods.

Description: Discussion of the movement toward principle-based reserves for LTC insurance.

Description: An Overview of Stochastic Simulation modeling techniques and usages

Description: Given the lower incidence rate, use of decision tree techniques like Classification and Regression Tree CART in understanding credit or operational risk becomes quite challenging. A commonly adopted solution is biased sampling approach, where more weights are attached to bad customers to artificially hike the incidence or bad rate. While adopting this type of biased sampling approach, question of the best weight arises. This paper adopts an iterative approach in identifying the best weight. The best weight for bankruptcy BKO profiling problem in hand occurred when the incidence rate was around 50 percent where entropy reaches its maximum.

Description: This paper incorporates a jump-diffusion process into the original Lee-Carter model, and uses it to forecast mortality rates and analyze mortality securitization.

Description: Some of the uncertainties related to catastrophe models are explored, leading to the suggestion that the actuary is well suited to understand and use these in the context of an ORSA exercise. Part of the essay collection "Risk Metrics for Decision Making and ORSA"

Description: In this paper we give new general criteria for the weak convergence of one-dimensional distributions of generalized risk processes and describe the class of possible limit laws under an infinite growth of stochastic portfolio size and stochastic intensity of insurance payment.

Description: This paper illustrates a current approach to capital allocation, referred to herein as Tail Contribution Analysis TCA, using it to evaluate the impact of changes in an insurer’s operations by allocating capital to individual lines of business. It then highlights a common problem in the implementation of the procedure arising from reserve volatility and briefly notes the failure of the methodology to account for a firm’s changing levels of risk under various strategies. Finally, it introduces an alternative method for analyzing business segments and strategies called Economic Profit Analysis EPA. We will discuss EPA’s key feature, “volatility replication,” an intuitively appealing process of building investor expectations and capital market information into the risk-and-return measurements used to evaluate strategic decisions. Finally, we will illustrate the benefit of using EPA in overcoming the problems of TCA and thereby providing concise reliable information for business decision making.

Description: This paper introduces a rich stochastic modeling framework for understanding risks in multiple-decrement contracts. The example in the paper is a 20-year Term insurance contract. Not only are mortality and lapsation considered stochastic, but the parameters governing them are. For example, mortality risk is composed of four risk elements, including error generated in the underwriting process, volatility around the best estimate, catastrophic events that impact mortality, and the trend in mortality improvement or deterioration. When stochastically modeled, the relative contribution and risk profile of each risk element can be evaluated. Generating stochastic mortality results provides a distribution of results that an organization faces and the severity and incidence of the tail events.