Description: This paper incorporates a jump-diffusion process into the original Lee-Carter model, and uses it to forecast mortality rates and analyze mortality securitization.

Description: This essay argues against the securitization of residential mortgages. The originating lending institution should have significant skin in the game when it makes a loan, but the securitization process removes this important financial control.

Description: This report examines the circumstances that lead to systemic risk and proposes a new definition.

Description: In the second half of 1997, magazine and newspaper reports started appearing in droves about the presumed doomsday of Jan. 1, 2000, for any and all activities associated with computers. This article discusses the 'Y2K problem' and the costs of addressing it.

Description: In this study, a network approach is taken to characterize the systemic risk of two nontraditional insurance industries: the bond insurer industry and the CDS market. These industries were chosen since traditional insurance industries do not generate significant systemic risk.

Description: Climate change is making a significant economic impact into the work that actuaries do. Actuaries working in general insurance have been at the forefront of this work for many years. Now, actuaries in investments, pensions, life and health insurance as well as enterprise risk management are considering the risks of climate change and quantifying the impact of climate change in their modeling. Actuaries can expect to hear of these developments in actuarial circles with speakers representing the Society of Actuaries, the Canadian Institute of Actuaries, the Casualty Actuarial Society, the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries (UK) and/or the International Actuarial Association.

Description: In this mortgage crisis, it appears mortgage brokers and mortgage originating bankers were similar to unchecked MGAs. These brokers and banks had an incentive to produce mortgages that would generate fees for them. Those mortgagees would then be sold to investors, generating additional fees – but it appears there were often no incentives to align the interests of those mortgage producers with the purchasers of these mortgages. The brokers and banks “did not have any skin in the game.”

Description: The article makes reference to how the intervention by government agencies and institutions into the financial marketplace are creating distortions. This artificial tampering into market mechanisms will likely result in major financial dislocations down the road as natural economic forces (coined by the term "invisible hand") eventually are allowed to come into play.

Description: Summary of the July, 2013 newsletter with an executive overview of each article.

Description: When regulators examine financial institutions, one of the most important areas on which they focus is capital requirements. This essay argues that we can’t push for neither too high nor too low default probabilities. Regulate too high and you introduce rigidity to the system: you choke the economy. Regulate too low and you introduce softness in your foundations: they cannot for long sustain the economy. Therefore, regulation should be set to provide a 'window for business'.