Back to the Drawing Board: Hedging programs worked well in 2008's third quarter for variable annuity writers that offer guaranteed benefits. According to a research report by ...
Back to the Drawing Board: To Guarantee or Not to Guarantee: Guaranteed benefits are one option. Another is using a variable annuity as an active-management platform. That's what independent adviser Brian Schreiner, ...
Breaking New Ground: Captive insurance companies traditionally insure commercial lines, but Alabama is on track to creating a new use--a captive that provides homeowners ...
Capital Matters : The January 2009 reinsurance renewal season has "survivor" written all over it. "The January renewals have shown that the global reinsurance industry has ...
Captive Domiciles: Bahamas Dr. Roger G. Brown, Registrar of Insurance Companies, Insurance Section, Ministry of Finance, Manx Corporation Center, West Bay Street, P.O. Box ...
Changing Course: During the 1992 presidential election, James Carville, one of President Clinton's campaign strategists, hung a sign in Clinton's Little Rock campaign ...
Changing Course: Deductible Leveraging's Impact on Health Insurers: Carriers that sell high-deductible health plans will begin to see the effect of deductible leveraging on their blocks of business. Deductible leveraging ...
Changing Course: The Obama Factor: One of the influencing factors for group benefits in the coming months is the impact of the 2008 elections. The Obama administration and the Democratic ...
Editor's Desk: Sales Leads in 2009: The current economic climate makes quality sales leads more important than ever for agents. Our cover story, "Contact Me," page 26, takes a look at the 21st ...
Fine Tuning: Gathering more-precise field data with a Smartphone helped one insurer realize its modeled catastrophic risk exposure could vary up to 15% because of ...
Fine Tuning: GAB Robins: A Custom View of Risk: The ability for risk managers to mouse-click through a series of customized reports is one side of an important coin for GAB Robins North America's claims ...
Fine Tuning: ICW: Growing the Workers' Comp Market: The ICW Group Insurance Cos. hopes its Web-based software will help it carve out a larger share in the small-business market segment for workers' ...
Fine Tuning: Products That Screen Exposure: National Insurance Co. realized about a year ago that it needed to prop up the risk management side of its business, according to Luis Rivera, senior vice ...
Follow the Money: With uncertain returns from the financial markets and the need to fuel growth in a rapidly changing business environment, it will be imperative for insurance ...
Insight: Bond of a Guarantee: The deepest financial crisis since the Great Depression has sucked the insurance industry and some of its most venerable companies into the maelstrom. The ...
Insight: Consider Options in Retirement Planning: Saving and planning for retirement are important whether or not your clients are in what is called the Retirement Red Zone--the five years before and after ...
Insight: Data Done Right: Insurance is a business of risks, and the proper management of an insurer's capital is critical to long-term survival and profitability. Financial ...
Insight: Making the Best of Bad Times: In A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens writes: "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." This well-known opening line sums up what the ...
Insight: Rescissionist History: Generally, misstatements or concealment of any material facts in an application for insurance, even if unintentional, entitle the insurer to rescind the ...
Insight: Steering Through Choppy Waters: A retired ocean captain with more than 50 years of high-seas experience was asked by a new captain, "What one phrase has led to your success?" The venerable ...
Insight: What Do You Know?: During my 25 years in the insurance industry, I have watched companies engage in talent wars. Believing that individuals from Ivy League schools or ...
Last Word: A Century of Learning: April marks the 100th anniversary of the Insurance Institute of America, which along with the American Institute for Chartered Property Casualty Underwriters ...
Long-T[ERM] Goals: The fallout from the credit crisis is affecting financial services firms across the spectrum, including some of the nation's largest insurers. These events ...
Long-T[ERM] Goals: ERM and Annual Reporting: In addition to evaluations conducted in conjunction with quarterly reporting, an annual assessment of the risk management program and practices should be ...
Long-T[ERM] Goals: ERM and Quarterly Reporting: Recent market and industry events are highlighting the importance of risk reporting to the board. The reporting of clear, accurate, comprehensive and timely ...
Long-T[ERM] Goals: ERM and the Chief Risk Officer: Only 49% of insurers bring together their risk functional units and business teams to set their risk tolerance and embed it in their control processes. ...
Looking for Trouble: This could be a busy year for litigation, especially for financial services and insurance folks, as investors look to recoup their securities-fraud losses by ...
Looking for Trouble: An Attorney's Point of View: Nancy Sher Cohen, a partner in the Los Angeles office of law firm Proskauer Rose LLP, said she's been receiving phone calls "by the dozens" from directors ...
Matching Patterns: During initial medical underwriting, the goal is to make the best possible cost projection for the upcoming year of coverage. Most projections are based on ...
Multiple Choice: For Informa's employees in India, private health insurance, flexible benefits and dependent coverage are top commodities. But in the United Kingdom, the ...
Multiple Choice: Meeting a Need: The benefits global employees are looking for differ almost as much as cultural and language barriers themselves. For instance, a U.S. employee would expect ...
Protective Measures: Parents and caregivers of children with disabilities are faced with all sorts of hurdles and pitfalls when it comes to financial and estate planning. Now ...
Remember the 'I' in 'IT': Whatever the recent market turmoil and evolving business conditions may bring, one thing remains certain: Insurance and risk management remain ...
Test Run: European life insurers are moving to manage their business on a market-consistent framework as a way to improve risk management and transparency. As a ...
Test Run: What Is the Integrated Economic Model?: The integrated economic model is a single view of a company's market-consistent balance sheet and income statement. It is a single reporting system for ...
