Description: a review of mergers and acquisition activity during the first half of 2004

Description: This paper focuses on the role of holism in enterprise risk management ERM. The performance measure known as market consistent embedded value is discounted for being overly reductionistic. The concept of an economic capital charge or credit is seen here as a potential bridge from the reductionistic to the holistic approach. It shows some promise for achieving holism, but falls short.

Description: A focus on the capital markets perspective and some of the products dealers offer to hedge and help mitigate capital costs and tail exposure risks. From The Actuary Magazine, April/May 2005

Description: Target volatility, as an investment strategy, has been used by many funds not only as a way to smooth return but also as a way to manage risks of the VA guarantees. Contrary to existing research which favors volatility targeting over fixed allocation, this article shows that because of the existence of market jump risk, target volatility strategy does not necessarily offer an improved risk profile for VA writers. Further, target volatility coupled with leveraging can significantly increase tail risk for insurance companies.

Description: Discusses the influences that foreign economies have on the U.S. economy and the risks that those influences create for the U.S. life insurance industry.

Description: This article discusses value at risk, VaR, and VaR modeling of the bank's portfolios that would recognize diversity and hedging. This article also covers the differences between classical VaR and the longer horizons required by the insurance industry and the feasibility of extending VaR to the insurance industry.

Description: At this presentation from Session 79PD of the SOA 1999 San Francisco Annual Meeting, the speakers explain the financial risks inherent in the Asian financial crisis and other, more recent crises. They discuss how such risks can affect other countries and regions. They touch on such topics as sovereign risk and currency mismatching. The speakers also comment on impacts on multinational financial services operations and suggest ways for the industry to prevent or better manage these risks. From the Record of the Society of Actuaries, Vol. 25, No. 3.

Description: These are the charts from Session 79PD of the SOA 1999 San Francisco Annual Meeting where the speakers explain the financial risks inherent in the Asian financial crisis and other, more recent crises. They discuss how such risks can affect other countries and regions. They touch on such topics as sovereign risk and currency mismatching. The speakers also comment on impacts on multinational financial services operations and suggest ways for the industry to prevent or better manage these risks. From the Record of the Society of Actuaries, Vol. 25, No. 3.

Description: This article explores the effectiveness of hedging delta and rho of equity options. This provides insight into the frequency and severity of losses due to not hedging volatility risk or other higher order risks. 10yr-equity put option strategies were chosen to represent the risk of hedging guaranteed benefits attached to variable annuities, while 1-yr put and call strategies were modeled to investigate the risk of hedging equity index interest credited to fixed indexed annuities. In both cases, the value of the option was compared to the value of delta/rho hedges in the tail of both actual historical and simulated scenarios for equity returns and volatilities. The historical path of interest rates and equities was generally used to highlight the hedge impact for different implied volatility assumptions in each example.

Description: This article discusses the use of mortality catastrophe bonds as a risk mitigation tool.