Description: Response to Life Insurance 2020 Foresight – A Call for Essays. An essay stating the author’s vision for the future of the life insurance sector.

Description: Essays advocating for incentive compensation linked to the level of risk in an organization.

Description: Some of the uncertainties related to catastrophe models are explored, leading to the suggestion that the actuary is well suited to understand and use these in the context of an ORSA exercise. Part of the essay collection "Risk Metrics for Decision Making and ORSA"

Description: Essays advocating for incentive compensation linked to the level of risk in an organization.

Description: Demonstrating that incentive maximization could lead to failure using game theory. This is illustrated by the optimum strategy for the Prisoner Dilemma single period, multi period and infinite period that could be mutually destructive or beneficial.

Description: Describes ways to avoid the next financial crisis by following the example of those who got it right and discerning what you could be doing to prevent your firm from experiencing excessive losses in future crises.

Description: This paper describes the use of the Moses software package to model variable annuities with multiple guarantees. Pricing and risk management are discussed.

Description: The actuary’s key role in the ORSA process should be to quantify the uncertainty surrounding the future financial results of the firm. By providing relevant standardized reports that clarify the uncertainty in terms easily understood by all stakeholders, the actuary will provide an essential element in the ORSA process. The dictum, "You can't manage what you can't measure." demonstrates the need to quantify risk, not just describe it qualitatively. While the ability to provide firm estimates of aggregate risk for complex organizations may not exist currently, doing so should be a target for the profession. The end result will be to enhance the financial security of the insurance industry at a time when all financial institutions are facing stakeholders skeptical about their financial condition. Part of the essay collection "Risk Metrics for Decision Making and ORSA"

Description: This paper introduces a rich stochastic modeling framework for understanding risks in multiple-decrement contracts. The example in the paper is a 20-year Term insurance contract. Not only are mortality and lapsation considered stochastic, but the parameters governing them are. For example, mortality risk is composed of four risk elements, including error generated in the underwriting process, volatility around the best estimate, catastrophic events that impact mortality, and the trend in mortality improvement or deterioration. When stochastically modeled, the relative contribution and risk profile of each risk element can be evaluated. Generating stochastic mortality results provides a distribution of results that an organization faces and the severity and incidence of the tail events.

Description: The paper summarizes results from two doctoral dissertations. The first discusses integration of insurance products with investment products to mitigate the risk of outliving one’s assets. The second discusses modeling and pricing for the longevity risk in the secondary market in insurance, including a provision for adverse deviation PAD.