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.

Risk taking in business contributes towards innovation. Yet excessive risk taking is associated with corporate failure. Many authors have analysed the relationship between personal liability rules of managers and excessive risk taking. In this context, previous researchers have often argued that insurance against personal liability of the manager (D&O insurance) would weaken the manager's incentive to take care.However, little is known about the workings and effects of D&O insurance. This book analyses how D&O insurance should work ideally and how it currently works in the USA, the UK, the Netherlands and Germany.It illustrates how D&O insurance threatens but also benefits society and the economy. In fact, a properly functioning D&O insurance system can more elegantly incentivize adequate risk taking than for example, direct regulation of managerial activity (e.g. disqualification) or the adoption of harsher liability rules.This book provides an overview of the implications of D&O insurance, in particular to:- policy makers who can take concrete reform proposals from this book;- investors who can increase their returns by using the information on corporate D&O insurance policies;- creditors who can better estimate their debtor's default risk by understanding the debtor's D&O insurance policy; and- finally, prospective insurers who can learn in depth about the D&O market, the policy design and the D&O risk.

From the bestselling author of Making money out of property in South Africa now comes 10 simple steps to property wealth, which distils, in a nutshell, all the tips and strategies, as well as all the most important and dif?cult lessons, the author has learnt over the course of his own career as a property investor. Lee points out the ‘good, the bad and the ugly’ of property investing, and shares with readers some very personal experiences, illustrating in an informative, accessible manner how to make solid investment decisions in a volatile property market. Lee believes that property is the cornerstone of wealth creation, and the 10 simple steps outlined in this book are designed to put readers on the right path to wealth creation through property.

Enterprise Level Security 2: Advanced Topics in an Uncertain World follows on from the authors' first book on Enterprise Level Security (ELS), which covered the basic concepts of ELS and the discoveries made during the first eight years of its development. This book follows on from this to give a discussion of advanced topics and solutions, derived from 16 years of research, pilots, and operational trials in putting an enterprise system together. The chapters cover specific advanced topics derived from painful mistakes and numerous revisions of processes. This book covers many of the topics omitted from the first book including multi-factor authentication, cloud key management, enterprise change management, entity veracity, homomorphic computing, device management, mobile ad hoc, big data, mediation, and several other topics. The ELS model of enterprise security is endorsed by the Secretary of the Air Force for Air Force computing systems and is a candidate for DoD systems under the Joint Information Environment Program. The book is intended for enterprise IT architecture developers, application developers, and IT security professionals. This is a unique approach to end-to-end security and fills a niche in the market.

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.

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.

Foreword by Harvey V. Fineberg, President of the Institute of MedicineFor decades, experts have puzzled over why the US spends more on health care but suffers poorer outcomes than other industrialized nations. Now Elizabeth H. Bradley and Lauren A. Taylor marshal extensive research, including a comparative study of health care data from thirty countries, and get to the root of this paradox: We've left out of our tally the most impactful expenditures countries make to improve the health of their populations,investments in social services. In The American Health Care Paradox , Bradley and Taylor illuminate how narrow definitions of health care," archaic divisions in the distribution of health and social services, and our allergy to government programs combine to create needless suffering in individual lives, even as health care spending continues to soar. They show us how and why the US health care system" developed as it did examine the constraints on, and possibilities for, reform and profile inspiring new initiatives from around the world. Offering a unique and clarifying perspective on the problems the Affordable Care Act won't solve, this book also points a new way forward.

Canadian financial institutions have been in rapid change in the past five years. In response to these changes, the Department of Finance issued a discussion paper: The Regulation of Canadian Financial Institutions, in April 1985, and the government intends to introduce legislation in the fall. This paper studi.es the combinantion of financial institutions from the viewpoint of ruin probability. In risk theory developed to describe insurance companies [1,2,3,4,5J, the ruin probability of a company with initial reserve (capital) u is 6 1 -:;-7;;f3 u 1jJ(u) = H6 e H6 (1) Here,we assume that claims arrive as a Poisson process, and the claim amount is distributed as exponential distribution with expectation liS. 6 is the loading, i.e., premium charged is (1+6) times expected claims. Financial institutions are treated as "insurance companies": the difference between interest charged and interest paid is regarded as premiums, loan defaults are treated as claims.

Financial Risk and Derivatives provides an excellent illustration of the links that have developed in recent years between the theory of finance on one hand and insurance economics and actuarial science on the other. Advances in contingent claims analysis and developments in the academic and practical literature dealing with the management of financial risks reflect the close relationships between insurance and innovations in finance. The book represents an overview of the present state of the art in theoretical research dealing with financial issues of significance for insurance science. It will hopefully provide an impetus to further developments in applied insurance research.

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."

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.

This book traces the development and analyses the performance of life insurance industry in India, since inception of this sector, using different business indicators over the years. It discusses the evolution and changing features of the Indian insurance industry in 3 phases: phase I from 1818 to 1956, phase II from 1956 to 2000 (known as the nationalisation period) and phase III post 2000 (called the post reform period). The book also measures the relative efficiency and productivity of the life insurance industry in India for the post-reform period, by employing Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). Despite the fact that the life insurance sector recorded a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 17% in terms of total premiums and 21% in terms of new business premium collections during the post reform period, the insurers continue to grapple with the issue of profitability. Against this background, the book presents results on the factors determining profitability of the life insurance companies using measures of efficiency and competition. By helping regulatory authorities determine the future course of action in the context of entry of foreign insurers and also in establishing a level playing field, the book has important policy implications.

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.

This book presents startling evidence that state monopolies can produce better outcomes than the free market. It provides an empirical comparison of the property insurance market in five European countries: Britain, Spain, France, Switzerland, and Germany. The market and cost structures of insurers in each country are described, and particular features of each market and the outcomes for customers examined. The regulatory frameworks vary widely from country to country and so do the market outcomes, both in terms of premium level and in terms of available insurance cover. In view of the increase in major floods and other forms of natural damage (such as subsidence) over the last decades, the non-availability of insurance cover in many competitive insurance systems is likely to become a major political issue. This book shows that state monopoly is an adequate policy response. Competitive insurance systems are shown to provide incomplete cover at a substantially higher cost. In mixed systems, where the private sector can obtain reinsurance from the state (such a system is being tried in France) the state tends to end up paying most of the costs (it reinsures most of the bad risks) while the private insurance companies keep most of the premium income. The book will be of interest to academic economists interested in privatization, regulation, the theory of the firm, and insurance; Policy-makers concerned with regulation and privatization; Insurance companies, regulators, and analysts.

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.

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

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

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.

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 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

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.

This timely Encyclopedia is a much-needed thorough reference on Islamic insurance policy and the ways in which this can be modelled to cohere with Shari'ah law. The authors explore the ways in which Islamic insurance can be halal, contradicting the widely held belief that insurance policies are not appropriate or moral, utilizing evidence from both the Qu'ran and top Islamic scholars to do so. The book explores Takaful, an insurance paradigm that is in accordance with Islamic principles and suits the needs of modern Islamic economies and communities. It examines the practices, principles, framework and importance of the notion of Takaful, using evidence from the Qu'ran and Islamic teachings to support this. Chapters examine how Takaful is different to conventional insurance models that are not permissible under Shari'ah law, contradicting misconceptions about the possibility of an insurance policy that is achievable within Islamic communities. The book further explores the room for cooperation between Takaful services and Islamic banking, offering insight into how this can be improved in the future. A valuable asset for Islamic insurance and Islamic economics scholars, this timely book offers a thorough analysis of Takaful, Retakaful and Islamic insurance in our modern world. It will also be a useful read for those practising Takaful to ensure that their advice coheres with Shari'ah law.

This book expertly introduces and clearly explains all topics covered in marine insurance law courses at undergraduate and postgraduate levels, offering students and those new to the area a comprehensive and accessible overview of this important topic in commercial law. Beginning by introducing the general principles of the subject, the structure and formation of insurance contracts, Marine Insurance Law then looks to individual considerations in detail, including: brokers, losses, risks and perils, sue and labour, reinsurance, and mutual insurance/P&I clubs. This title has been developed with the needs of courses specifically in mind, and its content has been tailored to include the most important and commonly taught topics in the field. Each chapter contains end of chapter further reading to support student research, ensuring this new textbook provides a reliable and accessible gateway into this important topic in maritime law

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.