Description: This article discusses the risk management approaches of insurers. The author described some of the current practices of the total return approach, how the total return approach is used in managing risks as a process, and a model that takes future sales into consideration and determines the appropriate fair valuation method of an ongoing business.

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

Description: This paper applies the research in Prospect Theory of Kahneman and Tversky to explain why sales of annuities lag sales of life insurance products. The author theorizes that life insurance is easier to sell because customers perceive themselves to be in the domain of losses, while potential annuity customers perceive themselves to be in the domain of gains. Kahneman and Tversky showed us that people are mostly risk averse in the domain of gains and risk seeking in the domain of losses. Purchase of an annuity or life product is a risky investment. Customers will find it easier to take the risk in the life insurance domain of losses than the annuity domain of gains. The author then proposes a hybrid life annuity product that might address both mortality and longevity risk in one product that would allow both products to be more competitive than stand-alone products.

Description: This article gives an overview of the CFO Forum diversification paper. The key points that the CFO Forum made are: 1. The lack of sufficient diversifying strategies for risk management needs to be addressed. Therefore they provided a policy framework that promotes sound risk measurement and management practices in a way that can be implemented and supervised with confidence. 2. The lack of sufficient regulatory over-site needs to be addressed, so they presented a set of core principles to form the basis of European insurance regulation. These core principle incorporate diversification in a consistent manner.