Description: This article talks about replicating portfolios, a basket of financial instruments designed to replicate, as closely as possible, the value and market sensitivity of a target portfolio of liabilities in different economic scenarios.

Description: Summary of recent surveys to life actuaries regarding assumptions surrounding policyholder behavior in the tail for universal life with secondary guarantees and minimum guarantees on variable annuities. This information is intended to examine and ultimately give guidance to actuaries on how to set policyholder assumptions in extreme scenarios.

Description: This article discusses the risk management approaches of insurers. The author described some of the current practices of the total return approach, how the total return approach is used in managing risks as a process, and a model that takes future sales into consideration and determines the appropriate fair valuation method of an ongoing business.

Description: One of the most fundamental concepts in actuarial practice is the time value of money. For any work in which future cash flows are allowed for, such as reserving or pricing, it is natural to discount to present values so that an appropriate amount of money can be set aside today, allowing for future investment returns. This article discusses yield curve extrapolation methods along with the benefits and drawbacks of these methods.

Description: This article discusses the growing exposure of ERM and where it's headed in the future. The author predicts that the ERM discipline will go deeper to reflect better the realities in our enterprises and that the science of ERM will leap forward through combining analytical skills and business knowledge, and through blending the insights of financial economics with the tools of management science.

Description: The purpose of this article is to provide a high level summary of the paper “Variance of the CTE Estimator” by B. John Manistre and Geoffrey H. Hancock that appeared in the North American Actuarial Journal in 2005. The authors also expanded on some of the results.

Description: French language version of Risk Management, August 2014 newsletter.

Description: The thrust of this article is that while ERM starts out as a compliance and corporate governance tool, well managed companies use ERM as a strategic tool that will help them increase shareholder value. To do so requires a synthesis of the actuarial techniques of insurance and the capital markets perspectives of corporate finance.

Description: This article introduces a non-traditional type of economic scenario generator that relies on dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) models are complex macroeconomics models and have been increasingly popular in central banks for analyzing monetary policies.

Description: Description of the increased gamma of the liabilities of a portfolio of variable annuities. Discussion of the sensitivity of gamma due to changes in policyholder behavior.