Description: This paper studies the statistical theory underlying minimum surplus required to protect a group insurer from the insurance, or C2, risk. Followed by 2 submitted discussion papers

Description: When fitting a model to any data, there is some uncertainty about which model is best. Green [1995] quantifies this uncertainty through the Reversible Jump Markov Chain Monte Carlo [RJMCMC] method. When using the RJMCMC method in a regime-switching situation, the chain determines the optimal number of regimes by jumping between various possibilities. This method gives each model its posterior probability of being the best. After an overview of the methodology, the authors apply it to various datasets and discuss the applications in modern actuarial science.

Description: This is presentations slides summarizing the many concepts presented in the research paper. “When Black Swans Aren’t: Holistically Training Management to Better Recognize, Assess, and Respond to Extreme Events”, by Guntram Fritz Albin Werther and Thomas Herget.

Description: Actuaries and other managers of risk identify factors in modeling insurance risks because [i] they feel that these factors may cause the outcome of a risk, or [ii] that the factors can be managed, thus allowing analysts a degree of control over the system risk. The purpose of this paper is to propose a framework for quantifying the relative importance of a source of risk. The intent is that, with a quantitative measure of relative importance, risk managers will be able to sharpen their intuition about the relative importance of risks and be better custodians of financial security systems. This paper proposes a measure of relative importance that has its roots in both the statistics and economics literatures. The measure is intuitively appealing when assessing the effectiveness of basic risk management techniques including risk exchange, pooling and financial risk management. The risk measure is also shown to be useful in multivariate situations where several factors affect a risk simultaneously. The paper illustrates this usefulness by considering a pool of policies that is subject to mortality, the risk of a disaster that is common to all policies, and to a common investment environment.

Description: It is the purpose of this paper to outline the reasoning behind the Catastrophic Accident Hazard and some of the details of a reinsurance arrangement with Lloyds of London for managing this risk. Paper is followed by 2 discussion papers

Description: This paper employs the theory of real option pricing to address problems in the area of operational risk management. Particularly, it develops a two-stage model to help firms determine the optimal triggers in the event of an influenza pandemic. The first stage proposes a regime-dependent epidemic model to simulate the spread of the virus, depending on whether the firm is active or inactive. The second stage views the reactivation decision as a call option and the suspension decision as a put option, and uses dynamic programming method to determine the optimal switching thresholds.

Description: Report from research project that reviewed and inventoried the range of quality and efficiency measures that demonstrate the performance of hospitals and physicians. Besides outlining key areas of consideration for quality and efficiency measurement, this report also describes future opportunities for actuaries and other health professionals interested in this evolving area. The inventory part of the report is in a separate document.

Description: For several years there has been discussion in the insurance industry of the need for additional capital sources to participate in insuring the financial risk posed by natural catastrophes. A number of methods for accessing the capital markets have been introduced and some insurers are using these to hedge exposure to catastrophe loss. This paper summarizes some of the discussion and describes some of the methods proposed. It then focuses on one of these methods, the use of catastrophe insurance options. Results of simulations are given which may serve as a guide to insurers interested in using these options as part of their risk management strategy and also as an indication to investors of the value of these instruments as a new component of an investment portfolio.

Description: This paper presents a method of testing second-order stochastic dominance of risks. This methodology allows risks to be partially ordered by value with available data - requiring only that the risks have yields distributed as one of the location-scale family of distributions and that the actuary can specify that family.

Description: “Non-traditional” guarantees refer to guarantees that are in addition to traditional mortality, expense, and interest guarantees. Examples of such types of guarantees are death and living benefits on variable annuity contracts and no-lapse guarantees on universal life or variable universal life products. The purpose of this paper is to offer practitioners an overview of the various issues concerning the pricing of these guarantees, the many other issues which need to be analyzed and addressed in the determination of risks and the management of the block of business, and the results of a company survey of practices. This paper is based on the working knowledge of the authors, a broad compilation of literature and the company survey results. At the end of most sections of the paper, we have provided a list of resources which we have selected as some of the best sources available for those practitioners interested in researching the subject matter further.