Description: The article makes reference to how the intervention by government agencies and institutions into the financial marketplace are creating distortions. This artificial tampering into market mechanisms will likely result in major financial dislocations down the road as natural economic forces (coined by the term "invisible hand") eventually are allowed to come into play.

Description: This session is about meeting the needs for financial information in managing an insurance company. Topics include: 1. What are management's basic needs how are they met can financial systems continue to meet the challenge? 2. Are fundamental changes ahead for GAAP reporting? 3. Is it time for mutual companies to provide more meaningful financial information? 4. Can current regulatory reporting meet the needs of the 21st century? 5. Can separate statutory and GAAP systems continue to coexist? 6. Will the United States regulatory environment reduce our global competitiveness? 7. Variance analysis - Why your predictions were wrong - Which variances are acts of God? - Which variances should be blamed on somebody? - How to deal with interest rate fluctuations 8. Market valuation, why? - What questions are being addressed with market valuation

Description: Highlight of the ERM Symposium

Description: The article explores the possibility of using the emerging technology for life insurers to build a monitor system for better risk and profitability management.

Description: Cyber threats and their costs are a continuously evolving, moving target and a source of uncertainty.

Description: In this issue, we’re pleased to share with our members some recent nice activities and initiatives of AFIR- ERM on the risk management space. Please fi nd useful information in the article below from Michael Sherris, Chairman of AFIR- ERM Section.

Description: When companies engage in risk management activities, they can be seen as modifying their distributions of future outcomes. Often, this takes the form of trading off a sure cost for a decrease in some potential risk of loss. Companies may carry out these activities with several goals in mind, such as reduction in earnings volatility or preservation of capital. This paper will demonstrate a method for evaluating possible strategies by dividing the effects on costs and risks into three tranches: earnings, impact and estate. The tranches can be associated with different interests of the various stakeholders. This trifurcation analysis can help to explain the risk-reward trade-offs of different risk treatment alternatives and can aid in risk-related decisionmaking.

Description: The costly, time-consuming and complicated process of enterprise risk management (ERM) can be improved in many companies and made less tedious for managers by using reasonable data and templates obtained from peer group entities. The models used to calculate economic capital (EC) often underestimate its value because they do not consider decision-maker perception about risk. We assume here that managers, as the decision-makers, have appropriate business understanding and they can provide substantial information about risk characteristics regarding all business processes. Therefore we are focused, in this paper, on collecting data from managers across the different businesses to derive the appropriate knowledge about risky events, the importance of particular types of risk, the relationship between the risk outcomes and the level of risk control in a particular industry. We conclude that the collected data has a high potential for use as a benc hmarking reference and analysis for improving ERM models for individual businesses.

Description: The article is Part 1 of two articles that provide a case study for the development of a profitability and risk dashboard. The sample dashboard provides distilled information regarding actual to expected (A/E) ratios for key risks, agent quality scores and customer value scores. The dashboard would also provide the value of new business written, surplus strain, debit balances, and expected losses on debit balances at different levels, down to the agent level. A product mix index is provided, together with visual comparisons of key metrics to the company's business plan. The Part 2 article will add information to the dashboard regarding risk margins, target capital, and company value.

Description: We develop a model based on causal mortality in order to better understand inequalities in life expectancy across socioeconomic circumstances.