Description: The article provides a summary of the Drake Risk & Opportunity Forum held on October 21, 2022. The forum was a hybrid conference that attracted more than 200 attendees from 17 states, two countries, 48 employers, and five universities. Following an introduction by the Zimpleman College of Business Dean, the forum held six sessions. First was an insurance company CRO panel followed by a panel of non-insurance company CROs. Gary Zhu shared his outlook for interest rates and capital markets. The fourth panel discussed insurance capital models. The fifth panel discussed environmental, social, and governance (ESG) criteria when building insurance company investment portfolios. The final session of the day was a discussion about the NAIC, how they operate, and their priorities for the coming year.

Description: The article introduces a cashflow matching strategic asset allocation (SAA) framework for life insurers. Given the recent shift to higher interest rates after two decades of persistent low interest rates, insurers have an opportunity to enhance their asset liability management by rebalancing asset portfolios to narrow duration gaps and attain higher risk-adjusted yields. The framework aims to align investment objectives with economic, regulatory, and rating agency requirements. It prioritizes cashflow matching as the primary optimization goal and incorporates security-level asset information to assist portfolio managers in executing SAA seamlessly. The article highlights the benefits of the cashflow matching SAA framework, including greater attention to cashflow matching, unbiased results, readily executable strategies, and stable economic reserves. A case study is included to demonstrate the effectiveness of the framework in improving risk-adjusted return and cashflow matching for a representative liability block.

Description: Dynamically Hedging Insurance Product Risk by Marshall C. Greenbaum from Risks and Rewards Newsletter, April 2000, Issue No. 34. A dynamic hedging program cab be an effective solution to insurance company market risk management problems.

Description: Reviews anecdotal evidence that the current shift to passive investing is an indication that investors are irrationally ignoring market risk.

Description: The models that seek to determine fair value for stocks use corporate earnings and a capitalization rate such as a price/earning ratio to arrive at fair value. Nearly all such models use interest rates to set the capitalization rate. Current interest rates are assumed to be fair, as if there were no emotions in the bond market. Interest rates themselves are never viewed as too high or too low. For the past 10 years [1984-1993] stocks have been viewed as too high, in relation to interest rates. In reality, interest rates have been too high.

Description: The article discusses the characteristics of the high-yielding bank loan asset class.

Description: Impact of low and negative interest rates on various aspects of insurer operations including product management, investment management and capital management.

Description: Presents results of 2003-2012 cohorts of insurance company private placement bonds. Finds private bonds show a 15bp annual advantage relative to public bonds, due to lower loss severity.

Description: Derives appropriate hedge ratios for CPPI strategies, taking into account discrete hedge times and market dislocations (gap risk).

Description: Feature article describing how traditional pension asset allocations contain so much risk that the details of the “liability benchmark” have been largely ignored.