1. THE PROBLEM OF CATASTROPHE RISK The risk of large losses from natural disasters in the U.S. has significantly increased in recent years, straining private insurance markets and creating troublesome problems for disaster-prone areas. The threat of mega-catastrophes resulting from intense hurricanes or earthquakes striking major population centers has dramatically altered the insurance environment. Estimates of probable maximum losses (PMLs) to insurers from a mega catastrophe striking the U.S. range up to $100 billion depending on the location and intensity of the event (Applied Insurance Research, 2001).1 A severe disaster could have a significant financial impact on the industry (Cummins, Doherty, and Lo, 2002; Insurance Services Office, 1996a). Estimates of industry gross losses from the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001 range from $30 billion to $50 billion, and the attack's effect on insurance markets underscores the need to understand the dynamics of the supply of and the demand for insurance against extreme events, including natural disasters. Increased catastrophe risk poses difficult challenges for insurers, reinsurers, property owners and public officials (Kleindorfer and Kunreuther, 1999). The fundamental dilemma concerns insurers' ability to handle low-probability, high-consequence (LPHC) events, which generates a host of interrelated issues with respect to how the risk of such events are 1 These probable maximum loss (PML) estimates are based on a SOD-year "return" period."

This book covers recent developments in the interdisciplinary fields of actuarial science, quantitative finance, risk- and asset management. The authors are leading experts from academia and practice who participated in Innovations in Insurance, Risk- and Asset Management, an international conference held at the Technical University of Munich in 2017.The topics covered include the mathematics of extreme risks, systemic risk, model uncertainty, interest rate and hybrid models, alternative investments, dynamic investment strategies, quantitative risk management, asset liability management, liability driven investments, and behavioral finance.This timely selection of topics is highly relevant for the financial industry and addresses current issues both from an academic as well as from a practitioner's point of view.

There is increasing pressure for all of us to take responsibility for our own financial security and wellbeing, but we often overlook how the benefits that come with a job can help us do that. Essential Personal Finance: A Practical Guide for Employees focuses on these valuable work benefits and shows how you can build on this important foundation to achieve financial security and your life goals. This unique book explores how making effective and practical use of these work benefits (such as pension scheme, life cover, sick pay, cheap loans, savings schemes and even financial coaching), means facing up to the behavioural biases we are all plagued with. Given that these can get in the way of even the best intentions, Essential Personal Finance tackles these biases head-on with practical ideas and tips for overcoming or harnessing them for good, and will help you to develop a positive and fruitful relationship with your money. With financial stress being a major cause of absenteeism and sick leave, low morale and lost productivity, the advice in this book also offers employers enormous benefits. By empowering employees through financial education and financial awareness, progressive employers will help them feel more in control of their lives, and experience less stress, resulting in higher morale and productivity. Offering a distinctive approach which combines academic insight with practical financial wisdom and tools, this is a must-have book for all employees. It will help you make the most of everything your job has to offer so you can worry less about money and live life to the full.

Can insurance be used as a means to obtain compliance with environmental policy? Answering this question requires examination of a broad mosaic of academic issues, including current systems available for providing compensation and deterrence, use of contracts (including insurance) as substitutes for tort law, limitations of regulatory policy-making by government agencies, pre-conditions for creation of insurance products, and market mechanisms necessary for insurance to be purchased or sold. The purpose of Managing Environmental Risk Through Insurance is to highlight the potential role that insurance and performance standards can play in managing environmental risk. Insurance can play a significant role in dealing with one of the most problematic issues facing society today - how to compensate for environmental exposures. This book analyzes the ability of insurance to play a role in managing environmental risk. It begins by outlining the role insurance plays in society in contrast to other societal tools for addressing risk: government benefit programs and imposition of involuntary liability using the court system. By so doing, the book describes the comparative advantages of insurance. The book then analyzes the insurability of the risks. Finally, the book applies the insurability analysis to three concrete environmental examples.

There is increasing pressure for all of us to take responsibility for our own financial security and wellbeing, but we often overlook how the benefits that come with a job can help us do that. Essential Personal Finance: A Practical Guide for Employees focuses on these valuable work benefits and shows how you can build on this important foundation to achieve financial security and your life goals. This unique book explores how making effective and practical use of these work benefits (such as pension scheme, life cover, sick pay, cheap loans, savings schemes and even financial coaching), means facing up to the behavioural biases we are all plagued with. Given that these can get in the way of even the best intentions, Essential Personal Finance tackles these biases head-on with practical ideas and tips for overcoming or harnessing them for good, and will help you to develop a positive and fruitful relationship with your money. With financial stress being a major cause of absenteeism and sick leave, low morale and lost productivity, the advice in this book also offers employers enormous benefits. By empowering employees through financial education and financial awareness, progressive employers will help them feel more in control of their lives, and experience less stress, resulting in higher morale and productivity. Offering a distinctive approach which combines academic insight with practical financial wisdom and tools, this is a must-have book for all employees. It will help you make the most of everything your job has to offer so you can worry less about money and live life to the full.

Poor people in developing countries are often affected by droughts, floods, illness, crop failure, job loss, and economic downturns. Much of their energy goes into coping with these shocks and into day-to-day survival. While insurance and credit markets, combined with widespread social security, provide an important cushion against poverty in rich countries, the need for immediate survival may lock the poor into persistent poverty in developing countries. The poor in developing countries do have informal mechanisms to cope with risk and misfortune. These are based on income diversification, risk avoidance, self-insurance by saving together with family, and community-based mutual assistance. Nevertheless, the scope of these mechanisms remains limited. Repeated individual-specific shocks such as illness or pests, or covariate risks associated with drought, flood, or recession, undermine the ability of individuals and their families to cope with risk. We now know much more about vulnerability to risk and how poor people cope. Even more importantly, we have learned much about the large long-term consequences of these risks, which condemns many to persistent poverty and excludes them from economic growth. But there is much that can be done. The micro-level studies that underpin this book offer new insights on how effective public action could be more effective in protecting the vulnerable against persistent poverty. Policy should focus on providing a comprehensive menu of ex-ante and post-crisis protection mechanisms, including new forms of insurance, savings, safety nets, and the means to strengthen the poor's asset base. Local communities have a big role to play: public funds should not be used to replace indigenous community-based support networks; rather they should be used to build on the strengths of these networks to ensure broader and more effective protection. With numerous thematic chapters and case studies of both best practice and of failure, from a mix of low-income and middle-income countries across the developing world, this book evaluates alternatives in widening insurance and protection provision, and makes an important contribution to the topical field of insurance and risk.

A companion volume to Rogers's "Insurance in the Soviet Union" (Praeger Publishers, 1986), this new work provides an in-depth examination of the operations of insurance industries in eastern European socialist countries. Rogers covers the administrative structure of insurance programs, the types of policies written, the insurance markets, and the extent of insurance protection. These topics provide the background to his discussion of two important issues: the transition from private to public insurance in socialist countries and the influence of the Soviet Union. In the latter case, there is explicit recognition by Soviet writers that practices in Eastern Europe have resulted in modifications of Soviet practices.

When the topic of death is a taboo subject to a population, how can life insurance companies create a market for their business? In Marketing Death, Cheris Shun-ching Chan examines the development of the life insurance market in China to address how culture impacts economic practice. Based on an extensive ethnographic study of various life insurance companies in China, Chan found a clear disparity in the way transnational and domestic life insurers dealt with local resistance to the idea of insuring against early death. While the transnational insurers attempted to remove this resistance by introducing new concepts about risk management, the locally-founded insurers redefined these concepts as money management to avoid the taboo subject. The domestic players' strategies proved to be more effective, but conflicted with the profit-oriented institutional logic of life insurance in the Chinese context. Having learned a lesson from significant losses, the domestic insurers eventually collaborated with their transnational counterparts to create a risk-management market. Nonetheless, local potential buyers, with their ingrained cultural values, continue to negotiate with insurance providers about their preferred product features. Chan argues that the life insurance business is growing rapidly in China despite these incompatible local cultural values largely because insurance practitioners strategically mobilized the local cultural tool-kit to circumvent the resistance. In Chan's account, the interplay of two forms of culture-a shared meaning system on one hand and a repertoire of strategies on the other-has significantly shaped the trajectory of the emergent Chinese market. Marketing Death is the first book to offer an analysis of the emergence of a life insurance market outside of the Euro-American context. It documents the processes and politics by which local cultures shape the way a market is formed and, hence, sheds light on the dynamics through which modern capitalist enterprises diffuse to regions with different cultural traditions.

Risk Modeling for Hazards and Disasters covers all major aspects of catastrophe risk modeling, from hazards through to financial analysis. It explores relevant new science in risk modeling, indirect losses, assessment of impact and consequences to insurance losses, and current changes in risk modeling practice, along with case studies. It also provides further insight into the shortcomings of current models and examines model risk and ideas to diversify risk assessment. Risk Modeling for Hazards and Disasters instructs readers on how to assess, price and then hedge the losses from natural and manmade catastrophes. This book reviews current model development and science and explains recent changes in the catastrophe modeling space, including new initiatives covering uncertainty and big data in the assessment of risk for insurance pricing and portfolio management. Edited by a leading expert in both hazards and risk, this book is authored by a global panel including major modeling vendors, modeling consulting firms, and well-known catastrophe modeling scientists. Risk Modeling for Hazards and Disasters provides important insight into how models are used to price and manage risk.

Originally published in 1979, The Investment Behaviour of British Life Insurance Companies provides a critical analysis of the investment policy of the life insurance industry for the period of 1962-76, and attempts to construct an econometric model of the investment behaviour. It looks at the portfolio composition of life funds and their position in the markets for securities in terms of their gross purchases and sales and net acquisitions. It also considers the principles on which life offices appear to operate the principles on which life offices appear to operate in respect of investing their 'reserves' to meet future contingent liabilities. This book will appeal to those working in the field of economic and business.

This book focuses on the application of the partial hedging approach from modern math finance to equity-linked life insurance contracts. It provides an accessible, up-to-date introduction to quantifying financial and insurance risks. The book also explains how to price innovative financial and insurance products from partial hedging perspectives. Each chapter presents the problem, the mathematical formulation, theoretical results, derivation details, numerical illustrations, and references to further reading.

This open access book discusses the statistical modeling of insurance problems, a process which comprises data collection, data analysis and statistical model building to forecast insured events that may happen in the future. It presents the mathematical foundations behind these fundamental statistical concepts and how they can be applied in daily actuarial practice. Statistical modeling has a wide range of applications, and, depending on the application, the theoretical aspects may be weighted differently: here the main focus is on prediction rather than explanation. Starting with a presentation of state-of-the-art actuarial models, such as generalized linear models, the book then dives into modern machine learning tools such as neural networks and text recognition to improve predictive modeling with complex features. Providing practitioners with detailed guidance on how to apply machine learning methods to real-world data sets, and how to interpret the results without losing sight of the mathematical assumptions on which these methods are based, the book can serve as a modern basis for an actuarial education syllabus.

This book is a contribution to the scholarly engagement with the wider problem of governing through risk and the politics of uncertainty. It takes life insurance as an empirical site from which to ask: what is the kind of governance created through insurance an instance of, and how does it contribute to the transcendence of liberalism? By making a distinction between capable life as object of insurance, and potential life as that which escapes its control, the book conducts a historical epistemological analysis of the problems of valuation, truth production, securitisation, classification, and gendering that constitute life insurance products and practices. Insuring Life offers a critical engagement with the epistemology of life insurance to demonstrate the unnecessary and precarious character of the conditions that make this instrument of liberal governance possible. It concludes that the transcendence of liberalism relies on the technological agency of these instruments and that its challenge begins by redefining the terms under which the potential of life, if invaluable, is to be thought as event. The book follows Insuring War as the third of a trilogy that analyses how concepts and practices of power, risk and security materialise in the form of insurance as a central instrument of governance in the liberal world. It will be of great use to scholars, researchers, and postgraduate students of political economy, critical security studies and political theory, the biopolitics of security and post-structural politics. Insuring War: https://www.routledge.com/products/search?keywords=insuring+war Insuring Security: https://www.routledge.com/Insuring-Security-Biopolitics-security-and-risk/Lobo-Guerrero/p/book/9780415522854

China's current social medical insurance system has nominally covered more than 95 per cent of 1.4 billion population in China and is moving towards the ambitious goal of universal health insurance coverage. Challenges posed by a rapidly ageing population, an inherently discriminatory design of the health insurance system, the disorder of drug distribution system and an immature legal system constrain the Chinese government from realizing its goal of universal health insurance coverage in the long run. This book uses a refined version of historical institutionalism to critically examine China's pathway to universal health insurance coverage since the mid-1980s. It pays crucial attention to the processes of transforming China's healthcare financing system into the basic social medical insurance system alongside rapid socio-economic changes. Financing Healthcare in China will interest researchers and government and think-tank officials interested in the state of healthcare reforms in China. Healthcare specialists outside of East Asia may also be interested in its general study of healthcare in developing countries. Scholars and students interested in the healthcare field will also find this useful.

A clear and accessible guide to finance, which provides the ideal introduction for the non-specialist. Packed with examples and case studies, the book features numerous real-world demonstrations of key concepts and ideas. This new edition includes coverage of ESG investing, a brand new chapter on digital currencies and electronic payments, and new case studies on sustainability versus profit maximization, environmental financing, socially responsible investing, the rise of fintech, the perils of cryptocurrency, global debt pressures and 'the rise of the South' in finance. The fourth edition will be supplemented by useful digital resources in the form of instructor PowerPoint slides and a testbank of questions for students.

A timely guide to understanding and implementing credit derivatives

Credit derivatives are here to stay and will continue to play a role in finance in the future. But what will that role be? What issues and challenges should be addressed? And what lessons can be learned from the credit mess?

"Credit Risk Frontiers" offers answers to these and other questions by presenting the latest research in this field and addressing important issues exposed by the financial crisis. It covers this subject from a real world perspective, tackling issues such as liquidity, poor data, and credit spreads, as well as the latest innovations in portfolio products and hedging and risk management techniques.Provides a coherent presentation of recent advances in the theory and practice of credit derivativesTakes into account the new products and risk requirements of a post financial crisis worldContains information regarding various aspects of the credit derivative market as well as cutting edge research regarding those aspects

If you want to gain a better understanding of how credit derivatives can help your trading or investing endeavors, then "Credit Risk Frontiers" is a book you need to read.

First Published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This book is a contribution to the scholarly engagement with the wider problem of governing through risk and the politics of uncertainty. It takes life insurance as an empirical site from which to ask: what is the kind of governance created through insurance an instance of, and how does it contribute to the transcendence of liberalism? By making a distinction between capable life as object of insurance, and potential life as that which escapes its control, the book conducts a historical epistemological analysis of the problems of valuation, truth production, securitisation, classification, and gendering that constitute life insurance products and practices. Insuring Life offers a critical engagement with the epistemology of life insurance to demonstrate the unnecessary and precarious character of the conditions that make this instrument of liberal governance possible. It concludes that the transcendence of liberalism relies on the technological agency of these instruments and that its challenge begins by redefining the terms under which the potential of life, if invaluable, is to be thought as event. The book follows Insuring War as the third of a trilogy that analyses how concepts and practices of power, risk and security materialise in the form of insurance as a central instrument of governance in the liberal world. It will be of great use to scholars, researchers, and postgraduate students of political economy, critical security studies and political theory, the biopolitics of security and post-structural politics. Insuring War: https://www.routledge.com/products/search?keywords=insuring+war Insuring Security: https://www.routledge.com/Insuring-Security-Biopolitics-security-and-risk/Lobo-Guerrero/p/book/9780415522854

There is a broad range of literature on the economics of insurance and risk management. This timely publication contains recent theoretical contributions to the economics of insurance and presents empirical tests and applications of the theory to many different insurance markets. It also offers important insights into the factors influencing corporate risk management decisions, and the theoretical underpinnings for why corporations with well-diversified shareholders would reduce risk. This two-volume set will be an essential resource to everyone with an interest in these important subjects.

Despite their economic and social importance, there are relatively few book-length studies of national insurance industries. This collection of nine essays by a group of international experts redresses this balance; providing an extensive geographical and thematic spread, linked via an extensive introduction.

This book provides a comprehensive account of the theory and practice of takaful, which is an Islamic alternative to insurance. The concepts are explained using real-life case studies, calculations, and exhibits to aid in reader learning and reflection. Takaful, both as an academic subject and as well as practice, is growing particularly in the world leading financial and learning hubs such as in the UK and the USA and countries with large Muslim populations in Asia, Africa, and Middle East.

This work, now in a thoroughly revised second edition, presents the economic foundations of financial markets theory from a mathematically rigorous standpoint and offers a self-contained critical discussion based on empirical results. It is the only textbook on the subject to include more than two hundred exercises, with detailed solutions to selected exercises. Financial Markets Theory covers classical asset pricing theory in great detail, including utility theory, equilibrium theory, portfolio selection, mean-variance portfolio theory, CAPM, CCAPM, APT, and the Modigliani-Miller theorem. Starting from an analysis of the empirical evidence on the theory, the authors provide a discussion of the relevant literature, pointing out the main advances in classical asset pricing theory and the new approaches designed to address asset pricing puzzles and open problems (e.g., behavioral finance). Later chapters in the book contain more advanced material, including on the role of information in financial markets, non-classical preferences, noise traders and market microstructure. This textbook is aimed at graduate students in mathematical finance and financial economics, but also serves as a useful reference for practitioners working in insurance, banking, investment funds and financial consultancy. Introducing necessary tools from microeconomic theory, this book is highly accessible and completely self-contained. Advance praise for the second edition: "Financial Markets Theory is comprehensive, rigorous, and yet highly accessible. With their second edition, Barucci and Fontana have set an even higher standard!"Darrell Duffie, Dean Witter Distinguished Professor of Finance, Graduate School of Business, Stanford University "This comprehensive book is a great self-contained source for studying most major theoretical aspects of financial economics. What makes the book particularly useful is that it provides a lot of intuition, detailed discussions of empirical implications, a very thorough survey of the related literature, and many completely solved exercises. The second edition covers more ground and provides many more proofs, and it will be a handy addition to the library of every student or researcher in the field."Jaksa Cvitanic, Richard N. Merkin Professor of Mathematical Finance, Caltech "The second edition of Financial Markets Theory by Barucci and Fontana is a superb achievement that knits together all aspects of modern finance theory, including financial markets microstructure, in a consistent and self-contained framework. Many exercises, together with their detailed solutions, make this book indispensable for serious students in finance."Michel Crouhy, Head of Research and Development, NATIXIS

First Published in 2005. This book is an attempt by a layman to explain to other laymen the purposes and processes of industrial assurance, an institution which exercises a far-reaching influence upon the life of the community, and in which for that reason the community, through its political organs of Parliament and administration, has long taken an inquisitive, critical, and entirely proper interest. This will be of interest to those studying the long experience which will enable its standards to be still further raised and those vested in its professional practitioners.