Description: This article discusses the risk management skills and aptitudes needed for the future.

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: Article from Risk Management Newsletter, July 2005, Issue 5 discusses an international initiative involving leading universities and professional organizations. In the current, all-out race for “ERM leadership,” a consortium of leading universities and professional organizations worldwide has taken action to jointly sponsor the ERM Institute International, Ltd. (ERMII)—a nonprofit educational and research organization with a focus on education, research and training in the ERM conceptual framework, quantitative methods and tools, and best practices.

Description: This article highlights 13 attributes shared by various groups of companies that landed in trouble. The companies are identified, and the attributes are described.

Description: Wayne Fisher discusses what it takes to successfully embed ERM in a firm, the development of models and setting parameters, and the importance of research.

Description: This article provides an overview of the commonly used structural credit risk modeling approach that is less familiar to the actuarial community.

Description: This article serves as a Solvency II primer by first introducing the Solvency II framework and then identifying several implementation issues that are still being resolved.

Description: Risk based pricing addresses some of the shortcomings of traditional pricing methods by providing a framework for understanding the tradeoffs between shareholder risks and rewards using a robust, transparent and objective economic methodology that is consistent across products.

Description: This article talks about the role that models played in the subprime meltdown and the subsequent crisis in the financial markets in general. The models failed to provide information about the magnitude of potential 'black swans'. Extreme Value Theory [EVT] is described as a potential solution to this error.

Description: The editors introduce the articles in this issue of the newsletter.