SAM Risk-free Rate Workshop
The Technical Provisions Task Group and KPMG ran a workshop for industry participation on risk-free rates recently. The idea was to see whether we could improve the extent and quality of industry...
View ArticleThe Perfect Storm – Part 0
The world of financial reporting for insurers has never been this close to the edge. There is more change brewing now even than when Europe adopted “European Embedded Values” and later “Market...
View ArticleThe Perfect Storm Part 1 – IFRS reporting under SAM
A client recently mentioned that they were concerned about the implication that the adoption of Solvency Assessment and Management (SAM) would have on insurance accounting under current IFRS4. The...
View ArticleOpen mortality data
The Continuous Statistical Investment Committee of the Actuarial Society does fabulous work at gathering industry data and analysing it for broad use and consumption by actuaries and others. I can only...
View ArticleLAC Seminar 2013 live tweeting complete list
A few people have mentioned that they found my “live blogging” or tweeting of the 2013 LAC Seminar in Cape Town and Joburg useful. I used the hastag #LACseminar2013. I’m repeating all of them here in...
View ArticleLinks to revised (2013) IFRS4 Exposure Draft
Quite a few people have asked me where to find the actual re-exposure draft of IFRS4. It seems to be easier to google for it than navigate the ifrs.org website, so here is the link to the page that...
View ArticleSA85-90 “combined” and more actuarial sloppiness
I know of far too many actuaries who think that the “average” SA85/90 table is an appropriate base for their insured lives mortality assumption. It’s not. It’s also a good example of “actuarial...
View ArticleTwin Peaks update Dec 2014
Treasury has released a new draft of the “Twin Peaks” or “Financial Sector Regulation Bill“. Plenty to work through here, as with the Retail Distribution Review draft and more, but here is the link if...
View ArticleThe worst insurance policy in the world
Aviva in France is still dealing with having written the worst insurance policy in the world. From the sounds of things, they weren’t alone in this foible. It’s also hard to say as an outsider what the...
View ArticleSouth Africa ranks 2nd in financial inclusion study
The Brookings Financial and Digital Inclusion Project measures South Africa one place behind Kenya in terms of financial inclusion. I’m still working my way through the full report, but Kenya’s score...
View ArticleCredit Life regulations and reactions (1)
Credit Life regulations have been live for long enough now that insurers are starting to feel the impact and the shake-up of amongst industry players is starting to emerge. There have been plenty of...
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What is Systemic Risk?
Systemic risk is risk to the “system” in some way. In the financial services world, it is often defined in one of two ways: Systemic risk can be defined in two ways The risk of contagion, where failure...
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ENID not Blyton
ENID is a term widely used, just generally not in South Africa. For some reason we didn’t import the term along with most of Solvency II. This has nothing to do with the Famous Five. While it is most...
View ArticleCredit Life regulations and reactions (2)
In part 1 I discussed the implications of basing premiums on initial balance or declining balance for profitability and the threat of substitute policies. In this post I want to discuss substitute...
View ArticleCredit Life regulations and reactions (3)
This is a short addition to parts 1 and 2. The question as to whether the benefit payable under a credit life policy can or should include arrears payments. The purpose of a credit life policy is to...
View ArticleCredit Life Aside: banning sale of credit life alongside lending?
Some markets have banned sale of insurance alongside lending Another way to deal with the problem of competition in credit life is to simply not permit the sale of insurance at the same time as the...
View ArticleCollective nouns for cats
In my ASSA convention presentation on systemic risk last week, I took pains to highlight the difference between real systemic risk and mere catastrophic claim risk or even concentration risk. In this...
View ArticleDownwards counterfactual analysis
Stress and scenario testing are important risk assessment tools. They also provide useful ways to prepare in advance for adverse scenarios so that management doesn’t have to create everything from...
View ArticleWhy isn’t there more micro insurance in South Africa
After a recent Actuarial Society sessional presentation I gave on micro insurance and the regulatory developments, I was asked why there aren’t more micro insurers operating in South Africa. Here is a...
View ArticleSlides from micro insurance sessional meeting in 2018
I had several requests for these slides. At some point they should also be available on ASSA’s website, but that process seems to take a curiously long time. Here are the Micro insurance sessional 2018...
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