Description: A glossary of terms.

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: There is no right price for a piece of insurance. There is simply the transacted market price, which is high enough to bring forth sellers and low enough to induce buyers. From Securitization of Insurance Risk: The 1995 Bowles Symposium, M-FI97-1.

Description: By establishing insurance risk as an asset class, participants will provide the insurance industry with vast pools of capital to mitigate catastrophic risk through the use of new nontraditional reinsurance products. From Securitization of Insurance Risk: The 1995 Bowles Symposium, M-FI97-1.

Description: This paper reviews the main methodological questions underlying the theoretical pricing of catastrophe insurance futures. From Securitization of Insurance Risk: The 1995 Bowles Symposium, M-FI978-1.

Description: New tools for managing insurance risk have particularly emerged in the 1980s and 1990s, usually with roots in the financial markets. A strong motivating factor has been the record number of natural catastrophes and their impact in insured losses. New organization or joint ventures have been created to meet this demand. From Securitization of Insurance Risk: The 1995 Bowles Symposium, M-FI97-1.

Description: The concept of crosshedging gives us the key to the actuarial understanding of most new tools arising in the area of alternative risk transfer mechanisms. Securitization of insurance, which is the theme of this symposium can, as I see it, almost always be seen as an exercise in crosshedging. The 1995 Bowles Symposium, M-FI97-1.

Description: Catastrophic insurance futures are being traded, albeit thinly, at the Chicago Board of Trade. This paper examines the broad context for trading insurance risk. The motivation for trading insurance risks, specifically to increase the capacity to cover risk, is discussed. From Securitization of Insurance Risk: The 1995 Bowles Symposium, M-FI97-1.

Description: Medical insurance today is more like pre-paid medical payments. Medical insurance should be bought for protection, but rarely used, like auto insurance.

Description: This paper describes methods for determining bounds on the price of derivative instruments, such as option on insurance futures, given only market information. From Securitization of Insurance Risk: The 1995 Bowles Symposium, M-FI97-1.