Description: Many life and health insurers are beginning to use Predictive Analytics (PA) for a variety of purposes. This article addresses the unique challenges and potential disruption PA brings to the risk manager, as well as the opportunities.

Description: In this article, the author examines five common perspectives on risk and see how they affect not just each participant’s own choices but everyone else’s choices, as well.

Description: Finding appealing return on equity for low margin or high risk weighted asset business by dealers has been challenging. Because of this, trading assets have fallen substantially especially in rates and corporate trading books. Smaller books suggest challenged liquidity as balance sheets become less elastic.

Description: The underlying premise of this paper is that enterprise risk management (ERM), as it continues to evolve as both a process and a collection of risk management techniques, can benefit from several different (but ultimately somewhat related) “megatrends.” The core of this paper concentrates on the impact on ERM of one of those megatrends: the emergence of a behavioral economics perspective, which is beginning to have a large impact on our understanding of the economy and on certain economic and business processes. The evolution and context of behavioral economics are described, and potential implications for the practice of ERM are discussed. The paper culminates with a variety of specific suggestions for ERM practice in response to findings from behavioral economics research, specifically a number of human cognitive dissonances inconsistent with traditional economic theory.

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: The Joint Risk Management Section's chairperson explains the Joint Risk Management Section Council members plans for the coming year, with a heavy focus on research and continuing education.

Description: Most reasonable risk mitigation strategies provide benefit in some circumstances, but come at a cost that adversely affects results in other scenarios. A research paper by the authors considers the view of multiple stakeholders to answer this question, resulting in a process they call Trifurcation.

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

Description: This article is dedicated to the non-statutory accounting treatment of common credit risk exposures of life insurers but does not cover all aspects of non-statutory accounting standards. It introduces the concept of and the valuation of credit risks, concerning life insurers.

Description: Read the April 2020 issue of Risk Management, published by the Joint Risk Management Section. Newsletters provide practical information for the working actuary, articles on trends that impact sections and news about section activities.