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

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: 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: 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.

Description: French language version of Risk Management, August 2014 newsletter.

Description: Article discusses possible effects of negative interest rates on product development, risk management, investment management and in-force management.

Description: Complete issue of the August 2014 Risk Management newsletter.

Description: Editors discuss the articles in this issue.

Description: This article discusses reserving issues for life insurance products with limited level premium guarantees or no-lapse guarantees, and capital markets solutions as an alternative to traditional reinsurance for relief from redundant reserve strain.