Description: This article discusses how insurers that focus on their core competencies and astutely outsource other functions will become more competitive and improve their performance.

Description: This article discusses the potential issues with a company's surplus due to currency fluctuations.

Description: Chairperson’s Corner: SOA Plans New Risk Management Section

Description: From a session 11 PD at a meeting of the Society of Actuaries held in San Diego, CA, June 22-23, 2000 This discussion presents an introduction to credit derivatives. From Record of Society of Actuaries, Volume 26, No. 1.

Description: Panelists at this session of the SOA 2003 Washington, DC Spring Meeting discuss how changes in interest rates affect the assets and liabilities of a life insurance company and what a company can do to prepare. This session examines historical trends in interest rates and how companies have reacted to both sudden and gradual changes.

Description: Why Write Variable Products When You Can Put the Money Directly into the Stock Market?

Description: This article contains the statistics of the equity premium or market risk premium [MRP] uses in 2011 for 56 countries. The paper also contains the references used to justify the MRP and comments from persons that both use and do not use MRP.

Description: This report introduces actuaries and risk managers in the insurance and pension industries to current literature discussing growth rates in the past and future expectations.

Description: Table from an article from The Actuary Magazine entitled Outsourcing of General Account Investments.

Description: A critical step in valuing a company for the purpose of financial reporting is the computation of the market value of economic surplus (MVES). This article provides a novel approach to the valuation of MVES that is stable and reasonably immune to “market noise.” Current approaches to the calculation of economic surplus of an insurance company generally define such surplus as the market value of the assets (MVA) supporting the liabilities less the market value of liabilities (MVL). While MVA is observable in the market, MVL is typically computed directly, without regard to the underlying supporting assets. Subtracting MVL from any value of assets that changes with market movements results in an unstable surplus. Consequently, a surplus that is not fully reflective of market sentiment has been rejected by many. This same approach is further used in the calculation of market consistent embedded value (MCEV) when a balance sheet approach is used .