Description: This article discusses how the industry as a whole is revisiting its risk management strategies in the wake of the financial crisis.

Description: The Society of Actuaries announces the release of a new report that will provide a resource for the insurance industry to learn about image recognition technology. Authored by Kailan Shang, the report explores the current status of image recognition technology, models for image recognition, and various possible applications of image recognition to insurance.

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 .

Description: Presenters in this session 14TS of the Monteal Spring Meeting introduce seasoned actuaries to the new material on the Finance Track of the Education and Examination syllabus. From the Record of the Society of Actuaries, Vol. 23, No. 2.

Description: In this article, the author gives an overview a number of Enterprise Risk Management ERM issues that arise when one considers the impact of income tax on a fair value accounting system.

Description: The panel discusses: 1. How fund transfers may affect expense recoveries through fee revenue 2.How transfers between fixed and variable funds may impact required capital 3. Product design features that affect the risk profile of the product and 4. Modeling considerations to quantify the policyholder behavior risk. From session 113PD of the 2001 Toronto Spring Meeting.

Description: From a session at a meeting of the Society of Actuaries held in Las Vegas, NV May 22-24, 2000 This teaching session discusses the available tools for communicating company risk postures to senior management. The focus is on tools that show distributions of results rather than a point estimate.

Description: A research report that first defines ERM and provides the results of an applicable literature search with hyperlinks and then describes the current state of Enterprise Risk Management practices for health organizations. Areas covered: 1. Operational Risks. 2. Balance sheet risks. 3. Pricing discipline. 4. Asset risks. 5. Learnings. 6. Emerging risks.

Description: The current financial crisis underscores the need for companies to take a sobering look at their approach to risk management. Among the many lessons to be learned, one is immediately clear: The subprime debacle represents a failure in risk management, rather than a failure of risk management.

Description: The world of the local S&Ls, the partner-owned investment bank and Bretton Woods isn’t coming back. So what does that leave us to do next? Part of me is persuaded by the second law of thermodynamics, which says that existence gets progressively more and more disordered with the passage of time, since any work done to address the current crisis expends more energy and causes more disorder than it fixes.