Description: Reinsurance reduces the required capital of the primary insurer but increases that of the reinsurer. Capital is costly. All capital costs, including that of the insurer and the reinsurer, are ultimately borne by primary policyholders. Reducing the total capital of insurers and reinsurers brings down the total capital cost and the total primary policy premium. A reinsurance arrangement is considered optimal—if it minimizes the total required capital. This optimal reinsurance is an attracting equilibrium under price competition. Evidence suggests an inverse relationship between the total required capital and the correlation between the losses held by different insurers and reinsurers. Examples are constructed to examine this and other properties of the optimal reinsurance.

Description: This paper provides a novel approach to the valuation of the market value of economic surplus that is stable and immune from “market noise”.

Description: This paper expands upon current capital analysis by introducing a practical approach that considers the objectives of all stakeholders on an insurance company in setting appropriate capital targets. From 2006 Enterprise Risk Management Symposium, M-AS06-1.

Description: An insurance product’s return on required equity demonstrates how successfully its results are covering the company’s basic capital. Using some simplified assumptions, it is possible to calculate this return ratio and decompose it without a full projection of liabilities.

Description: This paper introduces a minor modification to the Wacek framework that restores market consistency and additivity. The modification shifts the basis of the cost-of-capital risk margin embedded in the fair value loss reserve from an insurer’s own solvency capital requirement with respect to its claim obligations as prescribed by Solvency II to the required market-clearing capital implied by those obligations, which depends not only on the internal characteristics of the unpaid claim portfolio but also on its correlation with the total market portfolio of unpaid claims.

Description: This paper provides a novel approach to the valuation of the market value of economic surplus that is stable and immune from “market noise”.

Description: Abstract: A model for analyzing the probability and severity of default of sovereign entities and banks. The methodology analyzes the risks inherent in the investment of debt of sovereign governments and large financial institutions side-by-side, taking into consideration macroeconomic interactions among the sovereign fiscal and monetary authorities, the financial institutions, and the real economy. The signature aspect of the methodology is that it adapts a Merton-style default model to use explicit measures of sovereign assets and asset volatility.

Description: The purpose of this paper is to build a bridge between the traditional methods of looking at financial risk and insurance risk. The paper starts by explaining the concepts behind VaR models of economic capital used in banking. Differences between actuarial and financial views of risk are reviewed and explained. The paper concludes with proposing, developing, and parameterizing a true VaR model of insurance loss reserve risk, which combines several lines of business. From 2006 Enterprise Risk Management Symposium, M-AS06-1.

Description: As an alternative to the widely-used 'return on economic capital' RAROC, this paper proposes a performance measure consistent with standard valuation models, and discusses its implications for prudential regulation. From 2007 Enterprise Risk Management Symposium, M-AS07-1.

Description: The author constructed the efficient frontier of new business sales by modeling the embedded value and economic capital against a universe of possible growth rates of the three lines of business in a typical three-year planning horizon. The ERM function can use the efficient frontier of new business to provide a more rigorous analysis of the impact of growth rates on the firm’s overall capital efficiency and value creation, hence forming a feedback loop with the businesses in the planning process to optimize the growth strategy.