Description: Political figures and journalists have tended to blame deregulation and greed for the credit crisis. However, we would like to suggest that these were not the primary cause of the credit crisis. The real cause of the crisis was faulty regulation and arrogance. Flawed regulation in the over-reliance on complicated capital models and arrogance in believing that the complex mathematical formula in risk models overcame the limitations on input availability and enabled companies to capture returns that were greater than the cost of capital, have led Wall Street by creating CDOs and similar instruments to repackage risks and take out the systematic excess risk charges as profits, and have also allowed companies to run “prudently” on leverage ratios that were in hindsight over the limit.

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

Description: This session 75PD of the New Orleans Annual Meeting analyzes derivatives contained in various insurance products and techniques used to hedge the derivative exposure. From the Record of the Society of Actuaries, Volume 27, No. 3, Session 75PD.