Description: This risk bulletin, published by the Society of Actuaries, provides insights and expertise on critical business issues from industry leading enterprise risk management actuaries.

Description: Article introducing a new department in the newsletter by the section's SOA staff partner.

Description: This paper suggests that risk is too complex to quantify with a single number, and offers a two-dimensional risk measure while introducing the concept of 'iso-risk' curves. From 2006 Enterprise Risk Management Symposium, M-AS06-1.

Description: When companies engage in risk management activities, they can be seen as modifying their distributions of future outcomes. Often, this takes the form of trading off a sure cost for a decrease in some potential risk of loss. Companies may carry out these activities with several goals in mind, such as reduction in earnings volatility or preservation of capital. This paper will demonstrate a method for evaluating possible strategies by dividing the effects on costs and risks into three tranches: earnings, impact and estate. The tranches can be associated with different interests of the various stakeholders. This trifurcation analysis can help to explain the risk-reward trade-offs of different risk treatment alternatives and can aid in risk-related decisionmaking.

Description: We demonstrate an integrated enterprise risk management (ERM) solution to optimize the risk portfolio, identify natural hedges, create an optimal risk treatment plan, enhance risk culture, and facilitate risk reporting throughout the organization.

Description: This paper provides a description of a system using statistical spatial methods for measuring, analysis, and managing ERM losses. An example of its application to a delinquency rate in a residential mortgage portfolio analysis demonstrates how this methodology can help decrease a company’s exposure in high-risk areas and increase exposure in low-risk areas.

Description: An insurance product’s return on required equity demonstrates how successfully its results are covering the company’s basic capital. Using some simplified assumptions, it is possible to calculate this return ratio and decompose it without a full projection of liabilities.

Description: Many top-performing businesses aren’t just risk aware, but rather risk intelligent. Such a posture helps prepare companies for a major event and can demonstrate to a regulator or auditor that an appropriately strong control framework is in place. Better still, companies gain real strategic value from a “risk adjusted” understanding not only of their threats and vulnerabilities, but also the upside opportunities associated with various risks. It starts with having both qualitative and quantitative information to identify, assess and manage risks. Strategic risk management, at its core, is about creating value by increasing transparency and accountability, and quality of information. More than a mere compliance exercise, effective risk management enables more informed strategic decision making, increased accountability and transparency, a greater likelihood of organizational success, and – ultimately – competitive advantage, as borne out by many studies that correlate risk management and financial results.

Description: Wavelet models are used to analyze risk by time and frequency and provide richer information than time series models.

Description: Article describing key steps to develop an incentive compensation plan that aligns to the company’s risk profile, mitigate excessive risk taking, retain talent and meet the disclosure requirements. The yearly development cycle includes develop the incentive compensation program, communicate and implement and assess the plan performance on both short and long term horizon.