Description: This article provides an overview of behavioral economic theory as it relates to health and welfare insurance plans and provides summaries of two sample applications of the theories: enrollment in health insurance exchanges created by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, and product design considerations in light of vast health illiteracy.

Description: This article is intended to provide an introduction to microfinance and microinsurance. Microfinance began in the 1960's and 1970's as a humanitarian activity directed at the poor to provide micro loans for working capital. Microinsurance MI protects people in the low-income range against specific perils in exchange for regular premium payments.

Description: To inform and educate stakeholders for health plans and insurers on novel ways to optimize reinsurance structures to meet capital related goals and boost RBC and liquidity ratios. In lieu of traditional market-based financial instruments involving equity and/or debt, a quota share transaction can be used with potentially far more attractive terms and achieving essentially the same result.

Description: To explore the main drivers of the growing force of Chinese Life Insurance Industry.

Description: Projecting Budget Surpluses by Carl E. Walsh from Risks and Rewards Newsletter, April 2000, Issue No. 34. Discussion of the difficulties involved in making projections U.S. budget surpluses or deficits and how assumptions change.

Description: Traditional predictive tools are not built to deal with the variability the world currently faces. The COVID-19 pandemic amounts to a prolonged black swan event, for which one must look past conventional assessments to arrive at any level of confident predictions. Behavioral analysis factors for biases and heuristics designed specifically for uncertain evolutionary contexts, and which are the primary drivers of market participants’ decisions at present. Through understanding the most likely behaviors of individuals, it becomes possible to arrive at an aggregate understanding of market outcomes.

Description: Evidence is building from the physical sciences that we are starting to reach some of earth’s limits. Unless we can find some technological solutions, once these limits are reached, we can expect to see a very changed world. Instead of having constantly increasing resources available to us, we can expect ever-decreasing resources to be available. Instead of seeing year after year of growth, increasing longevity and improving morbidity, we can expect the opposite.

Description: This article discusses how risk management was a central element in the conduct of monetary policy in the United States as espoused by then Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan .

Description: This article talks about partnering with other risk professionals and the importance of research into the nature of risk and the responses to risk events.

Description: The Joint Risk Management Section conducted its fourth survey of emerging risks in fall 2010 in light of the BP oil spill which brought the impact of various risk combinations to the fore.