Description: Using data from 12,571 publicly traded U.S. industrial firms spanning 1980 to 2004 for which quarterly firm specific financial variables and macroeconomic variables are available, this is the abstract of a paper that estimates the probability of bankruptcy/merger for each company and hence a prediction of bankruptcy/merger in the next quarter.

Description: An overview of the principles, underlying theories, and the various strategies employed in Asset/Liability management. From Asset-Liability Integration, M-FI02-1.

Description: A discussion of how in recent years, the unpredictability of cash flows has become a bigger source of risk than it was in the past for insurers. Includes a discussion of how some of the risk due to this unpredictability might be managed through asset management strategies. From Asset-Liability Integration, M-0FI02-1.

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

Description: This paper charts the economic status of women moving from marriage to widowhood, and examines the changes in income and income sources that actually occur as women are widowed. The paper focuses, in particular, in the actual and potential role of pensions in preserving the economic status of widow. From Retirement Needs Framework, M-RS00-1.

Description: Announces the Section has sponsored an educational paper written by Diane Wallace, entitled “Risk Transfer in Life Insurance Company Reinsurance Transactions.” The article also gives a synopsis of the article and who it pertains to.

Description: This article addresses issues of importance to HMO excess reinsurance purchasers when negotiating a reinsurance treaty.

Description: “Non-traditional” guarantees refer to guarantees that are in addition to traditional mortality, expense, and interest guarantees. Examples of such types of guarantees are death and living benefits on variable annuity contracts and no-lapse guarantees on universal life or variable universal life products. The purpose of this paper is to offer practitioners an overview of the various issues concerning the pricing of these guarantees, the many other issues which need to be analyzed and addressed in the determination of risks and the management of the block of business, and the results of a company survey of practices. This paper is based on the working knowledge of the authors, a broad compilation of literature and the company survey results. At the end of most sections of the paper, we have provided a list of resources which we have selected as some of the best sources available for those practitioners interested in researching the subject matter further.

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: 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.