Description: The strategic approach that the banking industry in Latin America is taking to entering the bancassurance market to leverage the opportunity with their customer base.

Description: This article describes risk modeling and how to build a risk intelligence system.

Description: From a simple mathematical model of the underlying economics, I first predicted this crisis in July of 2004. An economic dynamic relating very low interest rates to the structure of the demand curve in the housing market made this outcome foreseeable, indeed inevitable. The current crisis had a mathematical cause. Essay on the collapse of the housing bubble.

Description: This article describes the actuarial role and opportunity in cleaning up the ...mess left by the excesses of the 1980s. From The Actuary Vol. 24, No. 4

Description: A description about current efforts of several Central and Southern Europen countries to improve penetration and density of insurance coverage, in the personal view of Renata De Leers. De Leers has spent many years consulting with regulators and industry leaders, and is an advocate of inclusive insurance solutions, as a way to foster economic development.

Description: The crisis has spread due to a systematic failure of the regulatory system. Over the last 20 years, regulations that fostered market stability were eliminated and new financial instruments were allowed to propagate without any real oversight. Instead of bailing out weak financial firms, we should be liquidating them. All doubtful assets need to be written-downs. We need accurate and transparent accounting. Government can help in this effort by cleaning up our accounting system. But it needs to stop being an investor propping up those that should be in the morgue. It needs to conservatively regulate all financial instruments. It should foster liquidity and stoke demand.

Description: Long-term guarantees place unanticipated burdens on companies because of the degree to which the environment can change. These risks are compounded when combined with estimation of policyholder behavior, especially when solid experience data is not available. When risks are properly reflected, long-term guarantees do not always provide value to the customer in excess of the manufacturing cost. The product development actuary is challenged to compare customer value to company cost and use that measurement to identify novel ways to design products to better serve customers.

Description: In insurance companies and pension plans currency risk arises when a company has future obligations in one currency and investments in another currency. The question that is often asked is whether this currency risk should hedged or not.