Description: This paper addresses rainfall insurance using financial derivatives. Usual modeling is done for temperature related products. The authors gathered rainfall data in Mexico City over a period of five decades. This showed that the time series data is stationary and normally distributed. Therefore, the authors applied a closed-form solution to value swaps, calls and puts, with and without limits. The model can be used for practical purpose of pricing rainfall derivatives. From Actuarial Research Clearing House, 2006.

Description: This paper on bancassurance in India discusses some of the salient developments of banks in India, how the lack of coordination between bank regulation and insurance regulation created confusion in the development of bancassurance, the main problems facing banks in India, and some of the long term drivers of bancassurance in India. From Actuarial Research Clearing House, 2006.

Description: This article discusses some 'standard' methods of foreign expansions. Strategic decisions for expansion in foreign countries require more than qualitative discussions about foreign expansion. It requires hard numbers on the benefits of such strategic expansion plans and is illustrated here with the example of MetLife's 2002 purchase of Ahisa [Aseguradora Hidalgo]. With that purchase, more than 70% of the Mexican insurance market is in the hand of foreign companies.

Description: This report describes a stochastic simulation approach used to estimate the amount of a level-payment annuity payable as long as the person is alive and living in his/her house. A discussion of the paper follows. From Transactions of Society of Actuaries 1991, Vol. 43.