Description: Risk management techniques do not include system science. System science requires that the uncertainty of the world is incorporated into the results. The articles explains the difference between risk and uncertainty. Learn how risk practices create an overoptimistic view of future outcomes.

Description: The Federal funds rate increased by 4.25% in 2022 with further increases in 2023, which have already resulted in a liquidity crisis for a few banks. As the rapid increase of the interest rates pushed the new money rates above the yields of many life insurers’ investment portfolios, insurance companies are facing a dilemma between compressed margins from peer pressure and the concern with liquidity shortfalls and realized capital losses should mass surrenders happen. This paper discussed main emerging risks under rising interest rate environment, and several ways to mitigate these risks.

Description: Chairperson's summary of Joint Risk Management Section (JRMS) Council accomplishments during the 2021-2022 Section Council year, as part of the December 2022 Risk Management newsletter. Includes an introduction to new council members, appreciation to those departing the Council, and introduces the new JRMS Council Leadership. Discusses the accomplishments made, areas of focus and activities underway which benefit JRMS Section members.

Description: Chairperson's summary of Joint Risk Management Section (JRMS) Council accomplishments during the 2021-2022 Section Council year, as part of the December 2022 Risk Management newsletter. Includes an introduction to new council members, appreciation to those departing the Council, and introduces the new JRMS Council Leadership. Discusses the accomplishments made, areas of focus and activities underway which benefit JRMS Section members.

Description: This is the second of a two-part article introducing and elaborating an “Adaptor” strategy for ERM. Such a strategy is intended to fulfil two purposes: first, switching among four styles of risk-coping strategies in order to track qualitative changes in a business’s risk environment; and, second, to support the business in navigating with resilience through all the seasons of a business-economic cycle, i.e., of boom, bust, moderate, uncertain. This latter requires careful study of the nature of resilience, the familiar idea of bounce back, and the less familiar idea of bounce forward. Part I of our article is underpinned therefore by a supplementary document (available from https://riskviews.wordpress.com/adaptor-exceptionalism/), which addresses the issue of structural change in a business or economy. It draws heavily on ideas taken from the discipline of control engineering, as well as some from ecology, social anthropology, and economics. The entire two-part article is thus an exercise in cross-disciplinary Systems Thinking.

Description: Feature article that discusses how insurance and banking business models have continued to grow in complexity over the past 50 years—from simple and local risk exposures to the current environment of complex and global exposures

Description: This article introduces a non-traditional type of economic scenario generator that relies on dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) models are complex macroeconomics models and have been increasingly popular in central banks for analyzing monetary policies.

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.

Description: Read the Joint Risk Management Section, Issue 44, May 2019 in french.

Description: Read the Joint Risk Management Section, Issue 44, May 2019.

Description: As sponsored by the Canadian Institute of Actuaries (CIA), Casualty Actuarial Society (CAS), and Society of Actuaries (SOA), the study looks at causes of insolvency and decisions made by management, regulators, and policyholders over the life cycle of the insolvency. Further, this study considers ways the profession can be equipped to prevent or mitigate future insolvencies. In addition to directly benefitting the profession, the work is also intended to assist other insurance industry practitioners in understanding the complexities of insurance company solvency and the benefit of keeping the actuarial profession in the forefront of company management, operations, and regulatory communication

Description: Latest in our on-going series in which we have a candid discussion with one the insurance industry's most respected and high profile risk practitioners

Description: Read the December 2018 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.

Description: Read the December 2018 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.

Description: Read the August 2018 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.

Description: The article explores the possibility of using the emerging technology for life insurers to build a monitor system for better risk and profitability management.

Description: Read the French language version of the March 2018 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.

Description: Read the March 2018 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.

Description: This article explores the methods of determining the optimal timing for risk management projects.

Description: Read the December 2016 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.

Description: Read the August 2016 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.

Description: In the current environment of global competition, the question of how much, and in what way, the enterprise risk management (ERM) function contributes to the creation of shareholder value will only increase in importance and urgency.

Description: The U.K. Pension Protection Fund (PPF) was established in April 2005 to protect the pensions of members of U.K. private sector defined benefit pension schemes that have insufficient assets and whose corporate sponsor fails. The fund takes over the pension scheme assets and assumes responsibility for the payment of compensation to the former members of the scheme. PPF is funded by a levy on the population of eligible schemes. The elements of the enterprise risk management of the fund have been developed by reference to practice within proprietary insurance institutions and other pensions funds; their application to this unique financial vehicle is the subject of this paper. The paper draws on references to relevant risk and actuarial work. It is designed to illustrate the application of principles and techniques to a real world example.

Description: The paper discusses the arguments supporting the need for risk culture to transition into ERM culture to be embedded across financial organizations. Creating and maintaining strong ERM culture is paramount to a lasting and meaningful ERM program. It is essential for organizations to understand what ERM culture is, how it gets established and in what way affects the process of ERM implementation. Often, the implications of financial enterprises not focusing on the significance of ERM culture manifested in severely compromised ability to generate sustainable value and market competitive advantage. This paper calls for rethinking the role of ERM culture in the context of managing risks.

Description: Listing and description of key articles in August 2011 issue of Risk Management. Topics include Predictive Modeling, Risk management and Solvency II.

Description: In this article, the author discusses the need to create a systemic risk regulator.

Description: In this article, the author discusses the capital shortfall an insurer faces because of the longevity risk on immediate annuities.

Description: This article focuses on how a risk appetite framework can help a company manage the “three-headed monster” and why a risk appetite framework is critical to effective business and risk management at both the corporate and product levels.

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

Description: In this article the author compares ERM issues, strategies and scenarios to the process of driving to work on a four-lane highway.

Description: This article discusses the system in systemic risk and suggests management approaches for dealing with systemic events.

Description: Description of the increased gamma of the liabilities of a portfolio of variable annuities. Discussion of the sensitivity of gamma due to changes in policyholder behavior.

Description: This article focuses on risk mitigation strategies and intends to demonstrate how an organization, a financial institution in this case, realized significant positive impact on its bottom line by integrating risk management in its overall business development strategy.

Description: Current risk management approaches for variable annuity business are not working very well in today's market turmoil.

Description: The management of The Guardian Life Insurance Company of America Guardian decided during 2006 to perform an economic capital EC analysis, with results to be delivered in the spring of 2007. A second generation EC analysis EC 2.0 was conducted from fall 2007 through spring 2008. This article describes EC 2.0.

Description: In this article, the author compares sailing to risk management.

Description: This article provides an overview of the commonly used structural credit risk modeling approach that is less familiar to the actuarial community.

Description: This article serves as a Solvency II primer by first introducing the Solvency II framework and then identifying several implementation issues that are still being resolved.

Description: This article provides some insights into risk appetite and how it relates to ERM.

Description: The problem facing risk distributors is that product pricing is sticky, whereas the market price of risk can be quite volatile. This disconnection can become particularly severe during market downturns. The problem facing risk insurers is maintaining market share in benign market conditions when the market price of risk is low. Strategies that are dynamic with respect to time are difficult in practice, since they require more capital in volatile markets.

Description: It is the belief of this author that the subprime mortgage mess was none other than a Ponzi scheme repackaged into 21st century financial engineering clothes. What makes this scheme particularly disastrous is that the 21st century Ponzi mortgages were packaged and sold to investors and then trillions of dollars of derivatives were constructed based on the underlying mortgages, magnifying the problem by orders of magnitude.

Description: The new ways of calculating capital requirements are relatively untested. We may be witnessing the results of such a test today. As of this writing, the global economy is almost surely entering a serious recession. One of the reasons for this appears to be inadequate capital provisioning. The failure of capital regimes to protect financial entities and, by extension, their customers has had unfortunate effects on the markets and economies of the world.

Description: Modern economies are based on the premise that all the main players look after themselves. The bankruptcy and limited liability laws gave property speculators and banks a put option on society so they could walk away from losses above their capital base, yet enjoy all the gains of such speculation. They acted in what they believed were their own interests. It seems that society – well aware of what was happening – did not effectively look after its own interest and now must pay the price.

Description: Property-liability insurers use reinsurance as a cost-efficient substitute for capital, but in a disruptive event, reinsurance prices and availability can change sharply.

Description: A collection of essays written on the current financial crisis, lessons learned and future implications.

Description: The liquidity crisis and the insufficient depth of the market led to a strong correlation crisis: many risks that could be considered as close to mutually independent in the classical regime suddenly became strongly positively dependent. More correlation crisis may happen in the future. We need to be more careful with black-box tools and to train what I would define as “quanlitative analysts” “Quanls” in the Enterprise Risk Management ERM process, that is 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: The thrust of this article is that while ERM starts out as a compliance and corporate governance tool, well managed companies use ERM as a strategic tool that will help them increase shareholder value. To do so requires a synthesis of the actuarial techniques of insurance and the capital markets perspectives of corporate finance.

Description: In this article, the author describes the skills needed for the Chief Risk Officer and he offers why actuaries may, or may not, be best suited to fill the role.

Description: This article discusses the growing exposure of ERM and where it's headed in the future. The author predicts that the ERM discipline will go deeper to reflect better the realities in our enterprises and that the science of ERM will leap forward through combining analytical skills and business knowledge, and through blending the insights of financial economics with the tools of management science.