Description: Duration matching is a risk management strategy, commonly used in the insurance industry, where the duration (price sensitivity to a yield curve movement) of an asset portfolio is adjusted to be made equal to the duration of the liability. However, this approach has flaws. In this essay, I note some key failures of duration matching and offer a potential alternative.

Description: In this session 94PD of the SOA Annual Meeting in New York the panel examines the communications link between the technical world of actuarial measurement based on cash-flow testing and the real world or daily and strategic decision making at top levels of insurance companies. From the Record of the Society of Actuaries, Vol. 24, No. 3.

Description: The purpose of this paper is to outline a framework that measures 'decision' and to argue that such a measure is the rightful focus of the enterprise. The paper develops the principle of maximizing expected utility as a normative decision theory from its philosophical roots in order to motivate its proper usage i.e., to the enterprise's ultimate good. From 2006 Enterprise Risk Management Symposium, M-AS06-1.

Description: This session discussion is about methods for determining and adjusting contingency surplus. From Record of the Society of Actuaries Vol. 15, No. 2.

Description: 1997 Valuation Actuary Symposium, Session 17 discusses market value measures and its uses in asset liability management.

Description: This article is about defining risks at the proper level. To do so one must distinguish between risks and the outcome of other risks. The so-called reputation risk is an example of something that is not a source of risk, but rather an outcome of other risks. In addition to defining risks at the source, is also important to categorize risks with consistent levels of granularity.

Description: Sponsored by the Society of Actuaries Research Expanding Boundaries Pool, this report examines an encompassing method to allocating economic capital in insurance conglomerates. Authored by Edward Furman, Yisub Kye, and Jianxi Su, the plan put forth unifies the centralized top-down and the detail-oriented bottom-up approaches

Description: 2011 ERM Symposium, Chicago. This is the abstract of the entitled paper.

Description: This report aims to help actuaries and other interested parties to define the relative differences in managing risks between the insurance and banking industries. This report guides actuaries and others about change risk management practices to prevent future financial failures. The paper seeks to examine what factors account for the differences in the United States, compared with Canada about the underlying causes and effects of the most recent crisis with financial institutions.

Description: This article discusses new developments on the regulatory front. Under the new agreement, insurance company management and boards will be required to issue a statement that reflects their judgment about the firm’s viability, including its capital adequacy. The required opinion will have five elements - identifying risks, measuring risks, a risk feedback loop, a risk tolerance statement, and a risk policy.