Description: Identifies some key pitfalls in developing equity-indexed products and suggests some steps insurers can take to avoid unpleasant financial surprises.

Description: Full version of Small Talk Newsletter, May 2001, Issue No. 17.

Description: Full version of The Financial Reporter, Number 41, February 2000.

Description: Full version of The Financial Reporter, Number 42, June 2000.

Description: This 2001 article discusses the requirement to assess hedge effectiveness in the Financial Accounting Standards Board’s new statement on derivatives accounting, FAS 133, Accounting for Derivative Instruments and Hedging Activities, as critical for qualifying for “special” hedge accounting. The article provides analysis of different approaches and the potential difficulties encountered. This article is reprinted with permission from Derivatives Week.

Description: This article speculates on the presence and magnitude of the benefits attributable to regular rebalancing of one's investment portfolio. It surveys the extant literature, discusses certain implications, and presents conclusions.

Description: The new ways of calculating capital requirements are relatively untested. We may be witnessing the results of such a test today. As of this writing, the global economy is almost surely entering a serious recession. One of the reasons for this appears to be inadequate capital provisioning. The failure of capital regimes to protect financial entities and, by extension, their customers has had unfortunate effects on the markets and economies of the world.

Description: This article presents new funding instruments for equity-indexed life insurance and annuity products.

Description: Full version of Risks and Rewards Newsletter, July 2001, Issue No. 37.

Description: This article discusses how FHLB advances, i.e. low cost loans, can supply valuable risk management benefits. By carefully structuring an advance to mature coincident with the anticipated premium inflows generated by insurance products, a company can largely eliminate future net cash flows and consequently the need to invest them in uncertain capital markets.