Description: In 2007, members of the Forecasting & Futurism Section were joined by members of the Technology Section and the Marketing & Distribution Sections to conduct a Delphi study about possible developments in the life insurance industry. It was named it “Blue Ocean Strategies in Technology for Business Acquisition by the Life Insurance Industry.” The goal was to have a panel of experts—actuaries and other financial professionals from across the country—identify and debate possible new approaches to acquiring business by life insurers. Panelists were asked to answer questions about possible “Blue Ocean Strategies.” This article highlights the ideas that resulted from those discussions as well as survey results on the same subject.

Description: This monograph was presented at the 2011 Enterprise Risk Management Symposium, held March 14-16 in Chicago. The author, writing from a property-liability insurance perspective, notes that capital allocation is a theoretical exercise because all of a firm’s capital could be depleted to cover a significant loss arising from any one segment. However, firms do need to allocate capital for pricing, risk management and performance evaluation. In this paper, the cost of capital in financial markets is incorporated into the Ruhm-Mango-Kreps algorithm to yield one allocation that reflects the true cost of capital an insurer would face.

Description: This paper evaluates the current practice of operational risk management in the insurance sector. Operational risk is nothing new in insurance, but, because of regulatory requirements, companies have initiated computation of risk capital for their operational losses. The current effort to manage operational risk is not a naturally evolving phenomenon, and operational risk, in the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision’s Basel II definition, is unlikely to be a significant cause of insurers’ failure. In addition, the current Basel II definition of operational risk is not suitable for the insurance sector. Consequently, the invention of models and tools based on the definition is incomplete and illusionary. My findings are based on the analysis of dozens of interviews with insurance industry professionals. I demonstrate the way operational risk is quantified in practice, show that the result obtained from this computation is of littl e use in managerial decision making and propose a set of policy recommendations illustrating the characteristics of operational risk in insurance. This study can be used as a platform for launching dialogues to initiate fresh thinking about operational risk in insurance beyond the current artificial and narrow boundaries.

Description: The purpose of this paper is to define a predictive model, based on known system attributes, for assessing risk associated with information systems.

Description: Latest in our on-going series in which we have a candid discussion with one the insurance industry's most respected and high profile risk practitioners

Description: This paper discusses various types of risks within an Enterprise Risk Management framework, responses to risk, and the implementation of an ERM framework.

Description: Principle-Based Reserving (PBR) is now upon us! Are you ready? Learn how Swiss Re's PBR Experience Sharing Solution can help you navigate this change.

Description: A research report that examines the effect of ERM adoption on a firm’s corporate reputation.

Description: This report provides a resource guide for asset-liability management practitioners, including methodology reviews, a survey of ALM practices, and guidance for applying ALM questions to real-world situations.

Description: The article describes an interactive game related to Social Security and how the user can play the game.