Description: Ten Years of the Brazilian Insurance Market - —Lessons and Perspectives. Legal and historical comments about the opening of the Brazilian reinsurance market.

Description: Introduction to academicians, practitioners, and gerontologists who comprise the Funding Longevity Task Force at the American College of Financial Services.

Description: The U.K. Pension Protection Fund (PPF) was established in April 2005 to protect the pensions of members of U.K. private sector defined benefit pension schemes that have insufficient assets and whose corporate sponsor fails. The Fund takes over the pension scheme assets and assumes responsibility for the payment of compensation to the former members of the scheme. The PPF is funded by a levy on the population of eligible schemes. To improve its ERM framework, the PPF has undertaken a reverse stress testing exercise. This analysis provided the organization with new insights into its risk profile, the scenarios leading to the PPF’s potential “failure,” and interactions between these scenarios. This paper discusses the principles and objectives of reverse stress testing in the special case of the PPF and then illustrates the application of complex system science techniques for the purpose of reverse stress testing.

Description: Companies are exposed to a variety of risks related to the development and implementation of their business strategy. There is an extensive amount of literature about enterprise risk management (ERM), yet it is still possible to find a new opportunity to analyze how different kinds of risk information can be objectively considered by senior management to enhance corporate governance and strengthen sound decision-making processes. Strategy formulation is the main part of the strategic planning process. A robust ERM framework must provide relevant risk information for decision-makers so as to reduce the possibility of selecting a mistaken strategy or overlooking an important one. Most common strategic planning tools do not even take risk into account, which worsens the situation. Subsequently, it is time to identify and measure strategic risks. They can leverage, hinder or prevent the fulfillment of the strategic objectives. Risk management may also support the development of institutional actions so as to increase the likelihood of reaching expected results. Furthermore, strategic risks should be monitored through key risk indicators to allow the identification of conditions that could lead to a risk event. This paper aims to introduce a new comprehensive model that integrates risk management into strategic planning. A number of risk tools, improvements to be made by risk managers and a practical application of the model are presented to make possible the establishment and deployment of an effective strategy by the organization.

Description: A proposal to address provider payment issues by gradually moving to accountable care organizations. Capitations would be risk-adjusted, non-capitated costs would be covered by hospitalization fund and stoploss, incentives for quality & effective preventive care would be tied to the amount remaining in the fund, and government involvement would be through incentives rather than mandate.

Description: Introduction to the January 2017 issue of The Pension Forum.

Description: Response to Life Insurance 2020 Foresight – A Call for Essays. An essay stating the author’s vision for the future of the life insurance sector. Some smaller companies might focus on smaller niche markets rather than compete with larger companies in the broader markets.

Description: The first of two parts of a panel discussion, by conference call, on the the evolution of Enterprise Risk Management at life insurance companies, and actuaries' roles in that evolution.

Description: If you’ve been reading my columns for a while, you have no doubt recognized that I tend to be consis- tently optimistic when it comes to the insurance contracts project meeting deadlines. I am constantly disappointed as the International Accounting Standards Board IASB and Financial Accounting Standards Board FASB fail to meet their own deadlines for producing exposure drafts or other papers. But this time is different.