Description: Increasing uncertainties and volatility in financial as well as real goods markets increasingly reveal that controlling systems based on deterministic and pseudo-exact values are insufficiently eligible to manage the business activities. This raises the question how management systems can be modified to generate the adequate management impulses in volatile periods. Risk management deals from identifying, evaluating and aggregating chances and risks, which again determine the potential fluctuation range of relevant performance indicators. Everyday corporate life shows that risk management is considered important; but the corresponding processes to identify, evaluate and report chances and risks are seldom part of established decision criteria. This “paradox” lets assume that risks are managed in various differing and unsystematic ways. The combination of traditional controlling methods and risk management is not primarily a methodological challenge. The behavior of the whole organization, practiced over a long-year period, has to be transferred into a new corporate culture of transparent dealing with chances and risks. This paper describes the necessary change management process, which has to come along with necessary methodological modifications.

Description: For the purposes of risk management and stress testing, we characterize a spectrum of plausible extreme events, that we dub Grey Swans, by introducing a probabilistic method involving the concentration of measure phenomenon. As a result, stress tests can be triaged according to severity, probability and, now, information-based plausibility.

Description: This article discusses incentive compensation metrics set to motivate performance, retain people, satisfy legal constraints and Say-on-pay and promote good risk management. Alignment discussion between actual metrics characteristics and the behavior they promote.

Description: This article advocates for a lower variable part in salary and increase focus on other mechanisms (goal setting, simpler product, management, culture and processes). The psychological aspect of belonging to the incentive compensation pool is more important that the financial aspect.

Description: This essay advocates for the consideration of risk in an interdisciplinary framework. An "effective resilience" metric is introduced as a way to reflect an organization's exposure and response to an adverse event, and to measure the ability of the organization to mitigate and recover from the resulting reduction in its operating level. Part of the essay collection "Risk Metrics for Decision Making and ORSA"

Description: Response to David Kausch’s comments on the paper.

Description: This paper is Part 1 of a two-part submission. Part 2, “An Alternative Approach to Capital Allocation,” discusses using risk-replicating techniques that directly calculate the cost of capital. Such techniques can be used as a substitute for capital allocation. This paper expands upon current capital analysis by introducing a practical approach that considers the objectives of all stakeholders of an insurance company in setting appropriate capital targets.

Description: Performance measurement is not the primary purpose of either GAAP or statutory accounting. This article discusses alternative methods of reporting used by life insurance companies to better measure financial performance.

Description: Panelists report on the status of activities by national associations in regard to risk-based capital requirements for health insurers. From the Record of the Society of Actuaries, Vol. 24, No. 2.

Description: In this article, the author examines how a seemingly impossible event becomes a harsh or startling reality.