Description: This is a report about inflation and index-linked securities in the United Kingdom.

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: A summary of the Global Trends 2030 report, the fifth such report produced every four years by the National Intelligence Council. The report is based on the research and analysis of the 17 major intelligence agencies in the US. The summary covers the highlights of the report.

Description: Baseline illustrations for article about the Delphi project to predict economic conditions far into the future in 2024. Measures under examination are 1. Increase in CPI, 2. 10 Year T-Bill yield, 3. S&P500 rate of return and 4. Corporate Baa bond yield. See the SOA website research section for the full report on the Delphi Study of Economic Variables.

Description: Book Review of How to Cope with the Developing Financial Crisis by Ashby Bladen, McGraw Hill, New York, 1979

Description: The author of this article, The Actuary’s editor, notes that this article is a capsule of what may be called “the Angle/Bladen theme.” John C. Angle spoke at Hartford in April 1980 see the Record for that meeting, pp. 188-193. His investment colleague, Ashby Bladen, addressed our Annual Meeting in Montreal last October 1980. Their observations were about mutual life insurance in the United States. The article notes that the current economic environment, with interest rates “far outside the familiar 3% to 6% range,” is a difficult one for life insurers and their traditional products, that we are becoming less conservative when the risk of serious economic trouble is rising, and “a satisfactory future depends on restoring stability, not upon trying to learn how to cope with instability.”

Description: Our November Query asked which groups, in addition to debtors and those blessed with amply indexed incomes, seem to have profited most conspicuously from the past decade’s inflation. This article summarizes the results.

Description: Microinsurance mechanisms provide coverage to low income earners, but a growing middle class is often lacking adequate access to insurance services. The author explores ways in which insurance may be more accessible.

Description: The author notes that “many considerations enter into the determination of investment strategy. Important among these considerations is the maximization of investment income on an after-tax basis rather than on a before-tax basis.” The article then discusses how starting in the early 1960’s insurers, using a marginal tax rate approach, invested heavily in tax exempt bonds. The author, expressing his belief that a major depression is likely to occur in the next 10 years, recommends insurance companies divest of their holding in tax exempt instruments, based on the macroeconomic analysis he presents.

Description: Evan Borisenko looks at previous challenging environments for the life insurance industry, such as the a period of severe stagnation in the 1930s, the increased inflation in the 1980s and a catastrophe like the Spanish influenza after the World War I. Evan explains that "while each event described above challenged the life insurance industry in a unique way, each event stimulated an equally unique solution." The article concludes that we "fight to repeat history" in a way that we as actuaries should be able to propose unique solutions with when faced with crisis in the future.