Description: This article was written in June 2008, prior to the financial crisis in the fall of 2008. It discusses the very complicated new world of financial insturments and derivatives and the risks that there may be in light of no strong capital requirements, no control on leverage and the high derivative volume.

Description: This article will highlight the issue that the sum of key-rate metrics does not add to metrics derived by parallel shift to the entire curve, even at very low shift size. Additionally, in the article I will outline how to define a single rate change to be applied to a key rate (or the entire curve) since the rate changes are generally not level or parallel.

Description: In this paper we introduce an approach to manage the organizations risks which is based on project management methodology, modern portfolio theory MPT, and risk management techniques. From 2007 Enterprise Risk Management Symposium, M-AS07-1.

Description: This paper measures the extent to which specific firms have implemented ERM programs and assesses the value implications of these programs. We find a positive relation between firm value and the use of ERM. The ERM premium is statistically and economically significant and approximately 17 percent of firm value.

Description: Chairperson’s column discussing the initiatives of the Financial Reporting Section for 2014.

Description: The ORSA should be more than a compliance requirement -- its process should be an integral element of a company's governance and risk and strategic planning process used by both management and the board on a regular feedback loop basis. Similar to that used for ERM, it along with a carefully constructed set of metrics should serve as the springboard to be used to identify, control and mitigate short- and long-term risks, as well as to enable exploitation of opportunities to add shareholder and policyholder value. Risk can represent an opportunity from which insurers can leverage their knowledge and risk management capabilities to find and maintain a competitive edge. Part of the essay collection "Risk Metrics for Decision Making and ORSA"

Description: AHIP commissioned the Menges Group to write this white paper on key pressures in the budgetary environment that stress the actuarial soundness of Medicaid rates. Though written by non-actuaries, this white paper thoroughly describes key professionalism topics that face Medicaid actuaries in their daily work.

Description: This article is an overview of the Financial Risk Managment of Insurance Enterprises course. The course incorporates financial risk management, asset pricing models and all risks facing an insurance company. The basics are then applied to asset-liability management and valuation.

Description: Feature article about how life insurance companies can manage the financial risk of life and annuity unclaimed property.

Description: For most of the last forty years, corporate defined benefit pension plan assets have been managed to balance risk versus reward in more or less the same way that a risk averse individual would do with his own portfolio. Recently liability cognizant strategies have been developed, but these also attempt to balance risks and rewards. But pension plans are not individuals; they, much like their widely-held corporate sponsors, are pass-through institutions. The economics of such entities are found in the corporate finance literature rather than in the literature of portfolio choice. The corporate finance (and thus the pension finance) objective is economic value added rather than return for risk. Enterprise risk management is a corporate finance activity too and its goal should also be value added rather than return for risk. The intersection of enterprise risk management and pension finance leads to a value-based discipline with two startling results: • Widely-held corporations can increase shareholder value by hedging away their own systematic risk (e.g., CAPM β). • Very many corporate defined benefit pension plans should define their liabilities and manage their assets to develop a net short equity exposure (negative β).