Description: Response to Life Insurance 2020 Foresight – A Call for Essays. An essay stating the author’s vision for the future of the life insurance sector.

Description: Here we are led to draw a distinction between “wild” markets and “free” markets. A wild market is unregulated and unscrutinized. Information flows are purposely impeded for competitive reasons and reduced to trickles from rumor and espionage. No one knows what anyone else is doing, and pricing is blind and haphazard. In such a market, there are no safeguards against anticompetitive behavior and no guarantees that the market will clear. The only guarantee is that there will be liquidity crises.

Description: The roots of the crisis are understood on a simplified basis, by 3 Ls: a Lack of accountability b Leverage and c Liquidity. Historically, people requiring mortgages sought their mortgages from local institutions that would conduct the evaluation and hold the risk. Loan officers of these institutions were accountable for the outcomes of their decisions – defaults were a direct reflection on their judgment. Leverage was a second key factor. Institutions guaranteed mortgages against default. The third L, liquidity, because a problem. When property values eventually evidenced their inevitable fall, defaults occurred at historically high rates.

Description: The central question is that of viability. Specifically, is the configuration of life insurers’ products and balance sheets economically viable under current accounting and ongoing market conditions?

Description: The current financial crisis underscores the need for companies to take a sobering look at their approach to risk management. Among the many lessons to be learned, one is immediately clear: The subprime debacle represents a failure in risk management, rather than a failure of risk management.

Description: Property-liability insurers use reinsurance as a cost-efficient substitute for capital, but in a disruptive event, reinsurance prices and availability can change sharply.

Description: This paper introduces basic embedded value EV principles, concepts and formulas that will be especially valuable to the beginning students of EV.

Description: Explores how blended families are different and the same. Provides survey data on how people feel about responsibility in different types of families. Provides stories of experience.

Description: This is one of eight essays from the collection: 2020 Living to 100 Essays.

Description: This essay focuses on some of the practical problems in supporting elderly seniors and carrying out their wishes. It tries to help families avoid disputes.