Description: The focus of this article is that while Economic Capital can be a valuable component of the ERM process for insurance companies, an over-emphasis on EC, to the point of neglect of other steps in the ERM process, can reduce the effectiveness of an ERM program.

Description: This article provides background and key results of the Risk Premium Project of the Committee on Theory of Risk [DOTOR] of the Casualty Actuarial Society [CAS]. The project is intended to gather research on risk issues and encourage further development.

Description: This article is based on the author's discussions with many executives of insurance companies regarding the challenges and limitations in ERM at its current state of evolvement. The following areas need to be addressed and improved on, in the author's opinion, to 'take ERM to the next level': 1. Reconciling Risk Concerns of Creditors and Shareholders. 2. Managing of Operational Risk. 3. Execution Risks. 4. Producing Credible and Useful Risk Adjusted Performance Measures. 5. Aligning Performance Metrics with Management’s Performance Measurement Philosophy.

Description: This article will examine four approaches under two different methods (eight in total) used to combat the non-additivity of key rates and will compare them under a number of rate environments.

Description: How insurers can include a liquidity score and liquidity stress scenarios as part of their asset liability management (ALM) protocol.

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

Description: There will be inflection points in the value of an instrument when interest rates change. These inflection points could materially impact the approximation of value change using ALM metrics. In this part of the seven-part series, I will highlight: • How to identify the inflection points; • the range of rate changes where ALM metrics may be relied upon i.e., the “validity” range, outside of which recalculation of the ALM metrics is required and the potential that one needs to rebalance the portfolio; • a technique to improve on the approximation of value change beyond the validity range; and • a technique to convert non-linear change on the yield curve to be used with duration and convexity.

Description: Description of the increased gamma of the liabilities of a portfolio of variable annuities. Discussion of the sensitivity of gamma due to changes in policyholder behavior.

Description: This article is about defining risks at the proper level. To do so one must distinguish between risks and the outcome of other risks. The so-called reputation risk is an example of something that is not a source of risk, but rather an outcome of other risks. In addition to defining risks at the source, is also important to categorize risks with consistent levels of granularity.

Description: This article talks about replicating portfolios, a basket of financial instruments designed to replicate, as closely as possible, the value and market sensitivity of a target portfolio of liabilities in different economic scenarios.