Description: The management of the investments of an insurance enterprise has undergone a considerable evolution since the pioneering work of Redington in the mid 20th century. Best practices have evolved to incorporate ever more complex insurance liabilities, expanding investment asset classes and global market opportunities. Strategic asset allocation (SAA), liability driven investing, and other robust optimization approaches form the core of the professional management of insurance company investments.

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: Abstract: A model for analyzing the probability and severity of default of sovereign entities and banks. The methodology analyzes the risks inherent in the investment of debt of sovereign governments and large financial institutions side-by-side, taking into consideration macroeconomic interactions among the sovereign fiscal and monetary authorities, the financial institutions, and the real economy. The signature aspect of the methodology is that it adapts a Merton-style default model to use explicit measures of sovereign assets and asset volatility.

Description: This paper provides a novel approach to the valuation of the market value of economic surplus that is stable and immune from “market noise”.

Description: The authors introduce an alternative to Tail Contribution Analysis TCA for analyzing business segments and strategies called Economic Profit Analysis EPA. They 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, they illustrate the benefit of using EPA in overcoming the problems of TCA and thereby providing concise reliable information for business decision making.

Description: The Society's Task Force to Study Risk of Loss from Changes in the Interest Rate Environment C-3 Risk Task Force was formed in March 1981 with the charge to quantify C-3 risk. The Task Force made a preliminary report as part of a panel discussion on C-3 risk at the Society's October 1981 meeting in Atlanta. This presentation provides an update on the progress to date and its future plans.

Description: Risk management and capital budgeting are two critical components of the corporate decision process. They often need to be considered jointly at the corporate level because of their natural interaction through the dependent risk exposures and other synergetic relationships within an intricate corporate structure in a dynamic business environment. . This paper develops an integrated framework that aligns these two important corporate strategies across business divisions to optimize the streamlined enterprise strategic goal in a multi-period setting. The proposed integrated framework can serve as a practical guideline for corporate executives to optimally coordinate capital budgeting and risk management at the enterprise level.

Description: Quarterly update on regulatory trends of interest to financial reporting actuaries.

Description: This paper presents the theory of immunization of investments to changes in interest rates and provides an extensive series of examples and formulas used in its implementation. Also presents some implications for investment behavior, product development, interest assumptions, valuation and adjusted earnings. Discussions of this paper are included.

Description: An exploration of risk management challenges in the Middle East, including historical overcapitalization, inadequate data and governance issues.