Description: In this article, the author examines five common perspectives on risk and see how they affect not just each participant’s own choices but everyone else’s choices, as well.

Description: The Joint Risk Management Section conducted its fourth survey of emerging risks in fall 2010 in light of the BP oil spill which brought the impact of various risk combinations to the fore.

Description: This is a book review of 'Mastering Operational Risk'. The book offers a high level review of the risk management process based on the banking industry. The target audience is someone interested in understanding their company's operational risk framework.

Description: The Joint Risk Management Section chairperson discusses the makeup of the new section council and the ERM symposium.

Description: This article is a recap of the 2010 ERM symposium and the paper awards.

Description: Much of enterprise risk management has its roots in portfolio management and corporate finance. The concepts of trading off risk and return and benefits of diversification are well understood and articulated in both the actuarial and economics fields, so I don’t believe there are significant knowledge gaps preventing actuaries from contributing to the field. In fact, actuaries may have an advantage in many situations where a large part of a firm’s overall risk arises from pension activities or other more typical actuarial risks.

Description: Feature article discussing quantitative impact studies, QIS5, on Solvency II.

Description: This article discusses new developments on the regulatory front. Under the new agreement, insurance company management and boards will be required to issue a statement that reflects their judgment about the firm’s viability, including its capital adequacy. The required opinion will have five elements - identifying risks, measuring risks, a risk feedback loop, a risk tolerance statement, and a risk policy.

Description: Political figures and journalists have tended to blame deregulation and greed for the credit crisis. However, we would like to suggest that these were not the primary cause of the credit crisis. The real cause of the crisis was faulty regulation and arrogance. Flawed regulation in the over-reliance on complicated capital models and arrogance in believing that the complex mathematical formula in risk models overcame the limitations on input availability and enabled companies to capture returns that were greater than the cost of capital, have led Wall Street by creating CDOs and similar instruments to repackage risks and take out the systematic excess risk charges as profits, and have also allowed companies to run “prudently” on leverage ratios that were in hindsight over the limit.

Description: The problem facing risk distributors is that product pricing is sticky, whereas the market price of risk can be quite volatile. This disconnection can become particularly severe during market downturns. The problem facing risk insurers is maintaining market share in benign market conditions when the market price of risk is low. Strategies that are dynamic with respect to time are difficult in practice, since they require more capital in volatile markets.