Description: This article gives you a different way to think about economics from a system science perspective and introduces concepts such as complexity, emergence, and interdependence. The concepts allow better conformity to the behavior of the markets and policyholder behavior.

Description: Duration matching is a risk management strategy, commonly used in the insurance industry, where the duration (price sensitivity to a yield curve movement) of an asset portfolio is adjusted to be made equal to the duration of the liability. However, this approach has flaws. In this essay, I note some key failures of duration matching and offer a potential alternative.

Description: This article explores how simple climate targets are driving paper decarbonization, which has serious unintended consequences. Risk managers must keep this in mind and choose metrics carefully to do their part in the climate transition.

Description: Since most cash flows being discounted in the value calculation are dependent on the forward rates, in the key-rate calculation forwards (not spots) should be shifted. I will show that if spots are shifted up/down, they would not necessarily result in forwards being up/down for all the years in the particular key rate, resulting in unexpected results. I will further show how metrics calculated by shifting forwards versus spots enhance the accuracy of the approximation of projected value in various rate environments.

Description: Regular update provided by the Chair of the Joint Risk Management Section on initiatives put forth by the section council for the current year.

Description: An update to the risk management readers on what the JRMS is planning to do over 2023 to serve its membership.

Description: In the current environment of global competition, the question of how much, and in what way, the enterprise risk management (ERM) function contributes to the creation of shareholder value will only increase in importance and urgency.

Description: The paper discusses the arguments supporting the need for risk culture to transition into ERM culture to be embedded across financial organizations. Creating and maintaining strong ERM culture is paramount to a lasting and meaningful ERM program. It is essential for organizations to understand what ERM culture is, how it gets established and in what way affects the process of ERM implementation. Often, the implications of financial enterprises not focusing on the significance of ERM culture manifested in severely compromised ability to generate sustainable value and market competitive advantage. This paper calls for rethinking the role of ERM culture in the context of managing risks.

Description: Obsolescence of physical assets and processes is a major component of operational risk for some companies. A simulation experiment shows that managers, who consider the retirement and replacement of individual assets in isolation, have rational incentives, due to risk aversion and uncertainty, to defer the replacement of assets past a time that is optimal from the perspective of the shareholder who owns the entire portfolio of such assets. This results in measurable wealth destruction, —and a demonstrable opportunity to significantly enhance a company’s value. A practical decision model for the replacement timing of fixed, physical assets, which creates wealth by minimizing the long-term consumption of scarce resources, is provided.

Description: This article presents the observations of some random investigation into the nature of CTE.