Actuaries have access to a wealth of individual data in pension and insurance portfolios, but rarely use its full potential. This book will pave the way, from methods using aggregate counts to modern developments in survival analysis. Based on the fundamental concept of the hazard rate, Part I shows how and why to build statistical models, based on data at the level of the individual persons in a pension scheme or life insurance portfolio. Extensive use is made of the R statistics package. Smooth models, including regression and spline models in one and two dimensions, are covered in depth in Part II. Finally, Part III uses multiple-state models to extend survival models beyond the simple life/death setting, and includes a brief introduction to the modern counting process approach. Practising actuaries will find this book indispensable, and students will find it helpful when preparing for their professional examinations.

Mit Hilfe der agentenbasierten Modellierung (ABM) lassen sich komplexe Systeme wie Finanzmarkte, Gesellschaften, Infrastrukturnetze, Organisationen oder ahnliches detailliert darstellen und anschliessend realitatsnah simulieren. Aufgrund der zentralen Fahigkeit der ABM, das Zusammenspiel einer Vielzahl heterogener Agenten miteinander sowie mit ihrer Umgebung recht einfach zu modellieren, koennen Phanomene auf der Makroebene durch Ereignisse auf der Mikroebene verstandlich erklart, zuverlassig prognostiziert oder auch in experimenteller Weise erkundet werden. Diese computergestutzte Methode bietet zahlreiche Vorteile, weshalb sie heutzutage bereits in vielen Anwendungsbereichen erfolgreich eingesetzt wird. So kann beispielsweise, abhangig von der gewahlten Modellierungsumgebung bzw. der verwendeten Software, eine grundlegende Einarbeitung ohne groesseren Zeitaufwand und vor allem auch ohne entsprechende Programmierkenntnisse autodidaktisch geschehen. Diese interdisziplinar angelegte Einfuhrung ermoeglicht einer breiten Zielgruppe einen Einblick in die Grundlagen der ABM.

Despite the importance of insurance in enabling individual and collective social, economic, and financial activities, discussions about the macro-economic role and risks of insurance markets are surprisingly limited. The core motivation for publishing this book is to bring together academics, regulators, and industry experts to provide a multifaceted array of research and perspectives on insurance, its role and functioning, and the potential systemic risk it could create. The first part discusses the macro-economic role of insurance and how insurance is different from banking and general finance. Understanding the differences between the balance sheets of insurers and other financial intermediaries is essential to understand the potential differences in risk nature and differences in optimal regulation. The second part of the book focuses on the risks of the insurance sector and the potential for systemic risk. The various chapters discuss the risks both on the asset and liability sides of insurers' balance sheets. The third part of the book covers the impact of regulation on insurance companies. Existing regulation is often complex and has a large impact on insurance companies' decision-making and functioning. The chapters also illustrate the unintended consequences of various forms of regulation. The book concludes with a summary of a survey that has been conducted in collaboration with McKinsey, where insurance executives have been asked about the risks and regulation in the insurance sector. The survey provides guidance for future research on insurance markets.

Die Situation der gesetzlichen Rentenversicherung ist bekanntlich katastrophal. Daher ist es unbedingt erforderlich, fur das Alter vorzusorgen. Versicherungsvermittler haben das Know-how und die Moeglichkeiten, Menschen an diesem Punkt zu helfen. Die Betriebsrente ist ein sehr geeigneter Weg. Jurgen Hauser zeigt klar die wesentlichen Erfolgsfaktoren auf, die fur den Verkauf betrieblicher Altersversorgung entscheidend sind. Neu in der 3. Auflage: Anleitung und Freischaltcode fur die Sofware "SV-Countdown". Unternehmer koennen hiermit leicht und centgenau ihre Sozialversicherungsersparnis bei Einrichtung eines Systems der Entgeltumwandlung berechnen.

Throughout history, innovators have disrupted existing financial services norms to change the landscape of the marketplace. Disruptive Fintech briefly traces fractional reserves, the creation of bank currency that traded at a premium to bullion value, central bank regulation, securitization of assets and loans, the current state of digital currency and electronic payments. The author then looks toward the future of fintech and the forces of disruption that will change the landscape of financial life as we know it. Using over 100 interviews with thought leading CEOs, this book develops a methodology to identify financial services that are ripe for innovation and discusses how innovative thinking can be used as a disruptive weapon to attack incumbents and create effective new fintech models. The book discusses How to relate historical innovations and disruptions in financial services to the current landscape How to follow a process to identify the threats facing incumbent processes and businesses, and how innovative thinking can be used as a disruptive weapon to attack incumbents and create effective new fintech models How many fintech innovations will be constructed by re-arranging or re-purposing existing core processes In this insightful book, author James Deitch, CPA CMB, argues that some of today's high-flying fintech innovators will flourish, but many may perish as the fire of innovation consumes those fintechs that are slow to monetize their promises.

Get your financial life in order. This comprehensive and objective guidebook will help you grow your net worth on a steady and increasing basis, regardless of your income level. This new and expanded edition covers changes and strategies to maximize financial benefits and planning resulting from the recent tax legislation, beginning January 2018, and changes to the Affordable Care and Protection Act of 2010. Covering all the financial bases you can reasonably expect to confront in your lifetime, such as insurance, investing, income tax planning, Social Security, Medicare, and more, this vital resource begins with techniques to protect a consumer's personal and business assets. It then transitions into the wealth accumulation process and outlines tax management measures, as well as the distribution of wealth for higher education, retirement, and estate planning purposes. Written by an expert and long-standing educator in the field of personal financial planning, Plan Your Financial Future is a no-nonsense, straightforward, and holistic view of the financial planning process. It is the one resource you need to become a more knowledgeable saver and translate those savings into the accumulation of future wealth. What You'll Learn Insure yourself, your family, and your property against the possibility of significant loss Invest in financial or real assets-or both Implement effective tax planning and management techniques Distribute your estate at death to your intended beneficiaries in a tax-efficient manner Discover strategies to maximize financial health taking into consideration the new tax legislation, effective January 1, 2018 Who This Book Is For Regardless of whether you are a recent college graduate or have spent the past several decades in the working world, this book will give you the smart, commonsense advice you need to get your financial life in order.

Insurance agents and financial advisors are being taught outdated marketing and sales strategies to grow their businesses. Cold calling, seminars, online leads, networking groups and display ads are showing less returns. At the same time, according to Google, every 5 seconds someone is searching for a financial or insurance product to meet their needs, yet most agents are unaware of how to reach this growing market. Shift is a compilation of exclusive, rarely-before-seen techniques, strategies and best practices used right now to increase sales exponentially using digital marketing. These are not taught in magazines, books or courses today simply because most people won't share them. Jeremiah has used these concepts to train over 100,000 agents in over 51 countries including the US, Canada, Japan, Switzerland, the Caribbean and South Africa. Using his years of success stories and behind-the-scenes access to the frontlines of what's working now, Jeremiah has been part of teams that have generated over two million leads in the insurance space, leading to over $300,000,000 in commissions paid out. He has documented the most inspiring, entertaining and duplicatable techniques his teams and front line advisors are using TODAY to SHIFT industry thinking to solve these problems.

Dieses essential gibt einen allgemein verstandlichen UEberblick uber ausgewahlte Erkenntnisse der modernen Verhaltensoekonomie und erlautert insbesondere die Bedeutung dieser Erkenntnisse fur die Versicherungswirtschaft. Der Fokus liegt dabei auf vom Idealbild des homo oeconomicus abweichenden Verhaltensmustern, die fur die Versicherungsbranche relevant sind. Die Autoren zeigen, wie die Erkenntnisse der modernen Verhaltensoekonomie dabei helfen koennen, die Bedurfnisse und Entscheidungsprozesse von Versicherungskunden besser zu verstehen und so die Akzeptanz bedarfsgerechter Versicherungsprodukte zu erhoehen.

Praise for "The Handbook of Variable Income Annuities"

"This wonderful book fills a big void by providing us with a complete picture of how the many aspects of retirement income fit together. The author's perspective that longevity is not a certainty to be saved for but a risk to be insured against redefines the future of the insurance industry."
--Jon A. Boscia, Chairman and Chief Executive OfficerLincoln Financial Group

"As the baby boom generation approaches retirement, planning for the golden years will assume an increasingly central role. Jeff Dellinger brings to this work broad, long-standing, and distinguished experience in the annuities field. This book is a great help to those who endeavor to enjoy retirement safely and anxiety-free."
--Mark Souder, United States Congressman

"Straightforward and clear, "The Handbook of Variable Income Annuities" describes the most important principles of optimal asset liquidation. It demystifies variable income annuities, givingfinancial professionals a high comfort level with this instrument, which is so important to the retirement security of Americans and others around the globe."
--Norse N. Blazzard, JD, CLU, Principal, Blazzard, Grodd & Hasenauer PC founder and past chairman of the National Association for Variable Annuities

""The Handbook of Variable Income Annuities" is the first book to rigorously present and unify the key ingredients that explain why a variable income annuity produces a better lifetime income result than alternatives. It is an imperative read for all financial professionals who aspire to serve retirees and prospective retirees."
--R. H. "Rick" Carey, founderThe VARDS Report

Withtrillions of dollars in retirement savings programs at stake, and millions of Americans on the precipice of applying these savings to generate retirement income, you can't afford to be without the knowledge, insights, and timely perspective this fascinating and comprehensive work offers. A must-read for those preparing for the tidal wave of retirees facing the very real, very important task of seeing their decades of accumulated wealth carry them through the totality of retirement safely, successfully, and with the prospect that their best standard of living lies ahead!

This diagnostics toolkit is designed to help countries assess the financial management of disaster risk and to provide a basis for them to enhance financial resilience through insurance and other risk transfer instruments. Disasters damage and destroy infrastructure and disrupt economic activities and services, potentially delaying long-term development and hampering efforts to reduce poverty in the region. Countries require a strong enabling environment for disaster risk financing to ensure the timely availability of post-disaster funding. In the report, the framework examines the state of the enabling environment and incorporates lessons from country diagnostics assessments for Fiji, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka.

The business of reinsurance developed at the fringe of financial services and, for most of its existence, went largely unnoticed outside the expert community. More recently, both public and professional sensitivity towards managing risks has increased and reinsurers have emerged as authorities on global threats such as climate change and natural catastrophes. This is the first book to provide a comprehensive historical description of this industry. It traces the global development of reinsurance from the early 19th century until today. As such it gives a detailed account of how the nature of risk itself changed over the last 200 years. It highlights all aspects relevant in shaping the industry from the development of risk, risk engineering and risk management, actuarial science, the financial and monetary environment, market conditions, impacts of politics, the effects of regulatory changes, to large risks and natural catastrophes. A comprehensive introduction by the editors highlights the different challenges and approaches to managing risk from a reinsurance perspective such as mathematical, financial, legal, and contractual developments, as well as the changing business models adopted. All of these are dealt with in further detail by ten contributing authors.

Predictive modeling uses data to forecast future events. It exploits relationships between explanatory variables and the predicted variables from past occurrences to predict future outcomes. Forecasting financial events is a core skill that actuaries routinely apply in insurance and other risk-management applications. Predictive Modeling Applications in Actuarial Science emphasizes life-long learning by developing tools in an insurance context, providing the relevant actuarial applications, and introducing advanced statistical techniques that can be used to gain a competitive advantage in situations with complex data. Volume 2 examines applications of predictive modeling. Where Volume 1 developed the foundations of predictive modeling, Volume 2 explores practical uses for techniques, focusing on property and casualty insurance. Readers are exposed to a variety of techniques in concrete, real-life contexts that demonstrate their value and the overall value of predictive modeling, for seasoned practicing analysts as well as those just starting out.

In recent years, the damage caused by natural disasters has increased worldwide; this trend will only continue with the impact of climate change. Despite this, the role for the most common mechanism for managing risk - insurance - has received little attention. This book considers the contribution that insurance arrangements can make to society's management of the risks of natural hazards in a changing climate. It also looks at the potential impacts of climate change on the insurance sector, and insurers' responses to climate change. The author combines theory with evidence from the rich experiences of the Netherlands together with examples from around the world. He recognises the role of the individual in preparing for disasters, as well as the difficulties individuals have in understanding and dealing with infrequent risks. Written in plain language, this book will appeal to researchers and policy-makers alike.

A straightforward guide to the evolution, benefits, and implementation of Solvency II

Providing a guide to the evolution, practice, benefits, and implementation of Solvency II, "Executive′s Guide to Solvency II" deftly covers this major European regulation which ensures that insurers can meet their risk-based liabilities over a one-year period to a 99.5% certainty. Part of the Wiley and SAS Business series, this book will guide you through Solvency II, especially if you need to understand the subtleties of Solvency II and risk-based capital in basic business language. Among the topics covered in this essential book are: Background to Solvency IILearning from the Basel ApproachThe Economic Balance SheetInternal ModelsPeople, Process, and TechnologyBusiness Benefits of Solvency II

"Executive′s Guide to Solvency II " has as its aim an explanation for executives, practitioners, consultants, and others interested in the Solvency II process and the implications thereof, to understand how and why the directive originated, what its goals are, and what some of the complexities are. There is an emphasis on what in practice should be leveraged upon to achieve implementation, specifically data, processes, and systems, as well as recognition of the close alignment demanded between actuaries, the risk department, IT, and the business itself.

Given the infinite variety of risks throughout history, it is perhaps unsurprising that insurance - the world's primary risk mitigation industry - developed a wide range of organisational forms by which it was delivered. Yet we know little about how and why different forms were chosen in the past, or why they survived or disappeared. This book is the first to examine the development of multiple organisational forms in insurance from an historical and international comparative context, and to relate historical analysis to modern organisational theory. Thirteen chapters cover eight major markets, US, UK, Germany, Japan, Spain, Sweden, Australia, South Africa, which together account for over half of all world insurance today. Each chapter is authored by an expert in their field, and several include new datasets. Major themes covered are the variety, choice, governance and regulation of organisational forms in insurance, the experience of mutual insurance in frontier economies and uncertain political environments, the long-run business performance of different organisational forms, and the problems surrounding the demutualization of modern insurance companies. The book suggests the need for important revisions to current organisational theory, and it highlights several explanatory factors that have received little attention from scholars. These include the importance of regulation and the role of the state in shaping the organisational landscape of insurance at different times and places; the role of entrepreneurship in organisational choice; the utility of organisational forms as a risk management device, and the significance of cultural preferences in the selection of organisational forms.

Reinsurance is a financial market that trades in the risk of unpredictable and devastating disasters - such as Hurricane Katrina, the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, and the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre. Such disasters are increasing in both frequency and severity, with the cost of their losses mounting rapidly. Reinsurance insures insurance companies, enabling them to pay claims arising from these losses. It is thus a market mechanism that is a critical part of the social and economic safety net, helping to pick up the pieces after disasters. Yet, how is the risk of such disasters calculated and traded in a global market? This book brings to life the reinsurance market through vivid real-life tales that draw from an ethnographic, "fly-on-the-wall" study of the global reinsurance industry over three annual cycles. The authors shadowed underwriters around the world as they traded risks through multiple disasters. For instance, this book takes readers into the desperate hours of pricing Japanese risks during March 2011, while the devastating aftermath of the Tohoku earthquake is unfolding. To show how the market works, the book offers authentic tales gathered from observations of reinsurers in Bermuda, Lloyd's of London, Continental Europe and SE Asia as they evaluate, price and compete for different risks as part of their everyday practice. Understanding how this market for disasters works has never been more critical given the impact of climate change and increased global connectivity, where a flood in one country can trigger losses to supply chains around the world. The authors develop a novel concept of how global markets work, which advances scholarship and challenges current thinking about how financial markets trade in intangible assets such as risk. This book will be useful to readers interested in markets for disasters, insurance, reinsurance and financial markets, and academics interested in the practice of financial markets specifically or the practice of strategy and organizations generally.

Predictive modeling involves the use of data to forecast future events. It relies on capturing relationships between explanatory variables and the predicted variables from past occurrences and exploiting this to predict future outcomes. Forecasting future financial events is a core actuarial skill actuaries routinely apply predictive-modeling techniques in insurance and other risk-management applications. This book is for actuaries and other financial analysts who are developing their expertise in statistics and wish to become familiar with concrete examples of predictive modeling. The book also addresses the needs of more seasoned practicing analysts who would like an overview of advanced statistical topics that are particularly relevant in actuarial practice. Predictive Modeling Applications in Actuarial Science emphasizes life-long learning by developing tools in an insurance context, providing the relevant actuarial applications, and introducing advanced statistical techniques that can be used by analysts to gain a competitive advantage in situations with complex data."