Description: Discussion of solvency problems and the actuary's role in addressing them in the life insurance industry.

Description: This paper focuses on the role of holism in enterprise risk management ERM. The performance measure known as market consistent embedded value is discounted for being overly reductionistic. The concept of an economic capital charge or credit is seen here as a potential bridge from the reductionistic to the holistic approach. It shows some promise for achieving holism, but falls short.

Description: ongoing discussion of the proper interest rate to use in discounting liability cash flows to reflect credit risk of the insurer in a fair value accounting system

Description: Performance measurement is not the primary purpose of either GAAP or statutory accounting. This article discusses alternative methods of reporting used by life insurance companies to better measure financial performance.

Description: This paper is Part 1 of a two-part submission. Part 2, “An Alternative Approach to Capital Allocation,” discusses using risk-replicating techniques that directly calculate the cost of capital. Such techniques can be used as a substitute for capital allocation. This paper expands upon current capital analysis by introducing a practical approach that considers the objectives of all stakeholders of an insurance company in setting appropriate capital targets.

Description: In this Chapter we present a novel way for estimating aggregated EC figures based on Bayesian copula estimation. Contrary to the classic approach of using a single inter-risk- correlation matrix we derive a probability distribution of possible correlation matrices that enables us to tackle the important issue of parameter uncertainty. Presented at 2010 Enterprise Risk Management Symposium, Society of Actuaries, April 12-15, 2010.

Description: In recent years a lot of time has been spent discussing a variety of different ways to measure the performance of an insurance company. One of the dominating concepts in the discussion of this has been 'Economic Capital' and with this the question of allocation of the [Economic] Capital with the intention of introducing a risk related measure of performance. In this paper, the authors view the performance measuring as a question of determining the appropriate distribution of a risk loading for participants in a risk pool having the overall risk priced by an actuarial premium principle. They show that the covariance principle can be found as the optimal solution to this risk sharing problem and show that the covariance principle fulfills some reasonable requirements. They furthermore suggest how the covariance principle can be at the basis of a target setting procedure for a multi-line insurance company.

Description: Presented at May 2002 Spring Meeting. Attendees learn about the new capital allocation, the financial products company 'FPC' model recently developed by S&P -including S&P's view of interest rate risk and credit risk in the FPC model, challenges of implementing the model for a life insurance company, and how the FPC model compares to economic capital methodology.

Description: Economic capital is an embedded part of the banking risk management and regulatory framework. The insurance industry has relied on rating agency and regulatory formulas that have been criticized as overcapitalizing and not appropriately differentiating risk drivers in the capital formulation. The emergence of C-3 Phase I and C-3 Phase II have introduced an economic approach to capital in the insurance industry. This half-day seminar takes a detailed look at the subject of economic capital. From the Record of the Society of Actuaries 2005, Volume 31, No. 1: 2005 New Orleans Life Spring Meeting, May 22-24, 2005, Session 9 Seminar.

Description: Increased attention was paid to regulatory capital with the global financial crisis in 2008. Whilst companies may not have the incentives to retain a large amount of capital in the absence of regulatory capital requirements, overcapitalized entities can have drawback such as its impact on competitiveness. There are other weaknesses in the regulatory capital model such as its limitation in facilitating risk-based decisions as regulatory capital does not necessarily reflect the economic reality and risks an entity faces. Nonetheless, there are ways for regulators and/or companies to handle the weaknesses in the regulatory capital model. For instance, granularity can be introduced in determining regulatory capital. Economic capital can be used to encourage entities to implement risk management controls and facilitate risk-based business decisions (e.g., risk-adjusted performance assessment and risk-based capital allocation). Ultimately, hav ing effective risk management and risk-based capital determination are ways to prevent company failures and bankruptcies.