Description: This is the second article in a two-part series examining the potential value to companies of implementing a company profitability and risk dashboard.

Description: Comments on Robert North’s paper, a real case study of disclosing MVL in a public employee retirement system.

Description: Applications of Stress Testing

Description: A sound enterprise risk management (ERM) framework functions as an ecosystem by balancing the interdependencies of its elements while constantly adapting to an ever‐changing, external environment. Each stakeholder has a unique role to play in forming a thriving ERM ecosystem by integrating risk‐conscientiousness in decision‐making. A resilient ERM framework has a single well‐ understood risk language and culture to promote healthy risk‐taking behaviors. The central focus of such a framework is concentrated around all stakeholders and everyone is held accountable. Every day, external forces can potentially disrupt how we operatively conduct business. Unforeseen changes in regulation, market trends, terrorist’s attacks and extreme natural disasters are often categorized as extremely adverse. How then will your ERM ecosystem survive the one‐in‐200 event and continue to flourish through dynamically changing environments?

Description: A sound enterprise risk management (ERM) framework functions as an ecosystem by balancing the interdependencies of its elements while constantly adapting to an ever‐changing, external environment. Each stakeholder has a unique role to play in forming a thriving ERM ecosystem by integrating risk‐conscientiousness in decision‐making. A resilient ERM framework has a single well‐ understood risk language and culture to promote healthy risk‐taking behaviors. The central focus of such a framework is concentrated around all stakeholders and everyone is held accountable. Every day, external forces can potentially disrupt how we operatively conduct business. Unforeseen changes in regulation, market trends, terrorist’s attacks and extreme natural disasters are often categorized as extremely adverse. How then will your ERM ecosystem survive the one‐in‐200 event and continue to flourish through dynamically changing environments?

Description: In this article, the author explains what a CAT model is.

Description: Building on the Part 1 article, Introduction to the Representative Scenarios Method, this article describes testing the methodology with respect to four product types, fixed indexed annuities with GLIBs, level term life insurance, universal life with secondary guarantees, and variable annuities with GLWBs. This Part 2 article describes testing results, refinements to the RSM methodology, and next steps.

Description: Metadata for entire issue

Description: In this article, the author examines how a seemingly impossible event becomes a harsh or startling reality.

Description: In this article, we provide practical guidance for understanding how to develop and apply an effective risk appetite statement.

Description: This article highlights some of OSFI’s expectations regarding the ORSA process, and provides general feedback and observations from OSFI’s reading of 2014 ORSA reports (including KMR) and discussions with insurers.

Description: The editors provide highlights of the articles included in the August 2015 issue of Risk Management.

Description: The editorial cautions that while the development of more sophisticated models may increase efficiency, it is important to consider the very real risk management costs associated with the increased complexity, efficiency and overconfidence in the predictive power of models.

Description: This paper presents the output of in-house research on an emerging area of risk appetite management and our global implementation best practices. It intends to provide readers with detail implementation of risk appetite framework and assessment across an organization. It provides the conceptual risk appetite framework based model- developed by the author, implementation plan, and global best practices of a risk appetite assessment across an organization. It identifies the challenges and exceptions in the risk appetite assessment with an approach to manage it effectively, and helps organizations with cost-benefit analysis. It also includes an illustrative case study.

Description: In summary, the goal of this report is to foster better industry-wide education, training and practice that decreases the future range and scope of what leading risk management professionals will henceforth label as being unpredictable as events now commonly thought to be so.

Description: This article explores reasons for plan sponsors to consider lump-sum payouts. The author suggests for plan sponsors looking to reduce risk, the factors outlined in the article suggest that sponsors may benefit from considering risk-transfer opportunities much sooner than they may have anticipated.

Description: Target volatility, as an investment strategy, has been used by many funds not only as a way to smooth return but also as a way to manage risks of the VA guarantees. Contrary to existing research which favors volatility targeting over fixed allocation, this article shows that because of the existence of market jump risk, target volatility strategy does not necessarily offer an improved risk profile for VA writers. Further, target volatility coupled with leveraging can significantly increase tail risk for insurance companies.

Description: To deal with future correlation crises, the author suggests the implementation of ‘’quanlitative analysts’’ (‘Quanls’) in the enterprise risk management (ERM) process: risk managers who are able to lead interdisciplinary ERM studies from a jointly qualitative and quantitative point of view, with an emphasis on dynamics.

Description: An overview of the articles in the August 2012 issue of Risk Management and a list of winners of the most recent call for papers, “Risk Metrics for Decision Making and ORSA.”

Description: A risk map is an effective and dynamic tool in helping companies develop a broader view of their risks.

Description: When using models a company can develop blind spots to risks. This article explains how to recognize the weaknesses in the models by recognizing the markets response to the innovation within the insurance product. Part of the essay collection "Risk Metrics for Decision Making and ORSA"

Description: The ORSA should be more than a compliance requirement -- its process should be an integral element of a company's governance and risk and strategic planning process used by both management and the board on a regular feedback loop basis. Similar to that used for ERM, it along with a carefully constructed set of metrics should serve as the springboard to be used to identify, control and mitigate short- and long-term risks, as well as to enable exploitation of opportunities to add shareholder and policyholder value. Risk can represent an opportunity from which insurers can leverage their knowledge and risk management capabilities to find and maintain a competitive edge. Part of the essay collection "Risk Metrics for Decision Making and ORSA"

Description: This paper demonstrates that extreme value theory (EVT) can be used as a tool to model policyholder behavior in the extreme tail. This paper applies EVT to the study of variable annuity dynamic lapse behavior in the extreme tail. It illustrates a process whereby a company can fully model policyholder behavior, including the extreme tail, with existing data. No judgment about the extremal behavior is necessary.

Description: This paper demonstrates the use of Quantile Regression in the development and understanding of conditional value at risk (VaR) models for enterprise risk management.

Description: Risk management and capital budgeting are two critical components of the corporate decision process. They often need to be considered jointly at the corporate level because of their natural interaction through the dependent risk exposures and other synergetic relationships within an intricate corporate structure in a dynamic business environment. . This paper develops an integrated framework that aligns these two important corporate strategies across business divisions to optimize the streamlined enterprise strategic goal in a multi-period setting. The proposed integrated framework can serve as a practical guideline for corporate executives to optimally coordinate capital budgeting and risk management at the enterprise level.

Description: ERM has methodology for quantifying the risk to capital, but to determine optimal capital, the impact of capital level on firm value is needed. This gets into the realm of valuation. Also capital allocation provides risk quantification for business units, but comparing return among units is fundamentally a risk-pricing exercise. When considering risk pricing, optimal returns on allocated capital are not necessarily constant across business units. The current ERM methodology, as well as actuarial literature on valuation and pricing, are reviewed, and possible directions for application of pricing and valuation methods to risk management problems are outlined.

Description: This paper is Part 1 of a two-part submission. Part 2, “An Alternative Approach to Capital Allocation,” discusses using risk-replicating techniques that directly calculate the cost of capital. Such techniques can be used as a substitute for capital allocation. This paper expands upon current capital analysis by introducing a practical approach that considers the objectives of all stakeholders of an insurance company in setting appropriate capital targets.

Description: From a session at the Spring meeting of the Society of Actuaries held in San Antonio, Texas, June 14-15, 2004 Speakers discuss the approaches to quantifying investment risk, including the credit risk subcomponent and mismatch risk sub-component in the three different types of risk-based capital RBC framework commonly used, such as regulatory, rating agency and company-specific economic-based formulas.

Description: From a session at the Spring regional meeting of the Society of Actuaries held in Atlanta, Georgia, May 24-25, 1999 Panelists discussed a comprehensive risk management approach to quantify the risk exposure from various sources.