Description: Summary of the July, 2013 newsletter with an executive overview of each article.

Description: In summary, the goal of this report is to foster better industry-wide education, training and practice that decreases the future range and scope of what leading risk management professionals will henceforth label as being unpredictable as events now commonly thought to be so.

Description: An introduction to the Goals-Progress-Strategy (GPS) strategic risk management framework: an original synthesis of scenario based ERM, the Logical Framework Approach, and new metrics and methods. GPS improves strategic planning and execution and enables practical management of the risks a company faces in pursuit of its business goals. The framework provides a portfolio view of a company’s strategic objectives, a return on risk-adjusted capital measure, risk-intelligent decision making, and risk-adjusted performance measurement/compensation.

Description: Companies are exposed to a variety of risks related to the development and implementation of their business strategy. There is an extensive amount of literature about enterprise risk management (ERM), yet it is still possible to find a new opportunity to analyze how different kinds of risk information can be objectively considered by senior management to enhance corporate governance and strengthen sound decision-making processes. Strategy formulation is the main part of the strategic planning process. A robust ERM framework must provide relevant risk information for decision-makers so as to reduce the possibility of selecting a mistaken strategy or overlooking an important one. Most common strategic planning tools do not even take risk into account, which worsens the situation. Subsequently, it is time to identify and measure strategic risks. They can leverage, hinder or prevent the fulfillment of the strategic objectives. Risk management may also support the development of institutional actions so as to increase the likelihood of reaching expected results. Furthermore, strategic risks should be monitored through key risk indicators to allow the identification of conditions that could lead to a risk event. This paper aims to introduce a new comprehensive model that integrates risk management into strategic planning. A number of risk tools, improvements to be made by risk managers and a practical application of the model are presented to make possible the establishment and deployment of an effective strategy by the organization.

Description: Description of considerations and perspectives to be taken into account by incentive compensation plans.

Description: This article discusses some of the ideas of pension finance, how to present such information, and how it was presented to the New York City Retirement Systems (NYCRS) in a way that made it available to other interested parties, including the public.

Description: The article introduces a cashflow matching strategic asset allocation (SAA) framework for life insurers. Given the recent shift to higher interest rates after two decades of persistent low interest rates, insurers have an opportunity to enhance their asset liability management by rebalancing asset portfolios to narrow duration gaps and attain higher risk-adjusted yields. The framework aims to align investment objectives with economic, regulatory, and rating agency requirements. It prioritizes cashflow matching as the primary optimization goal and incorporates security-level asset information to assist portfolio managers in executing SAA seamlessly. The article highlights the benefits of the cashflow matching SAA framework, including greater attention to cashflow matching, unbiased results, readily executable strategies, and stable economic reserves. A case study is included to demonstrate the effectiveness of the framework in improving risk-adjusted return and cashflow matching for a representative liability block.

Description: COVID19 highlights the need for greater complexity expertise in risk management. Crisis like the current COVID19 pandemic and 2008 Financial meltdown and others help us to turn into focus inwards for introspection on how we can better manage our resources and provide a deeper understanding of what our objectives should be and how we can achieve them through applying complexity science.

Description: This paper demonstrates that extreme value theory (EVT) can be used as a tool to model policyholder behavior in the extreme tail. This paper applies EVT to the study of variable annuity dynamic lapse behavior in the extreme tail. It illustrates a process whereby a company can fully model policyholder behavior, including the extreme tail, with existing data. No judgment about the extremal behavior is necessary.

Description: This paper examines the potential impact of increasing negative commentary by social media users in multiple forums, which can erode the “reputation capital” of a utility. It also offers an approach for successfully addressing that risk and integrating social media risk management practices into existing utility enterprise risk management (ERM) programs.