Index based insurance schemes can play a vital role in insuring poor people in developing countries against a multitude of risk. However, the concept doesn't go along without any obstacles. Matthias Roedl provides a theoretical framework of index based insurance schemes and further highlights where the latter distinguishes from a classic indemnity insurance. Thereby, scholars can gain a comprehensive theoretical insight into the topic, while practitioners are enabled to identify and understand fundamental challenges for their project upfront as well as to foster sound solutions.

This book is written for the experienced portfolio manager and professional options traders. It is a practical guide offering how to apply options math in a trading world that demands mathematical measurement. Every options trader deals with an array of calculations: beginners learn to identify risks and opportunities using a short list of strategies, while researchers and academics turn to advanced technical manuals. However, almost no books exist for the experienced portfolio managers and professional options traders who fall between these extremes. Michael C. Thomsett addresses this glaring gap with The Mathematics of Options, a practical guide with actionable tools for the practical application of options math in a world that demands quantification. It serves as a valuable reference for advanced methods of evaluating issues of pricing, payoff, probability, and risk. In his characteristic approachable style, Thomsett simplifies complex hot button issues-such as strategic payoffs, return calculations, and hedging options-that may be mentioned in introductory texts but are often underserved. The result is a comprehensive book that helps traders understand the mathematic concepts of options trading so that they can improve their skills and outcomes.

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.

Much has been written about the ups and downs of financial markets, from the lure of prosperity to the despair of crises. Yet a more fundamental and pernicious source of uncertainty exists in today's world: the traditional "insurance" risks of earthquakes, storms, terrorist attacks, and other disasters. Insightfully exploring these "acts of God and man," Michael R. Powers guides readers through the methods available for identifying and measuring such risks, financing their consequences, and forecasting their future behavior within the limits of science.

A distinctive characteristic of earthquakes, hurricanes, bombings, and other insurance risks is that they impact the values of stocks, bonds, commodities, and other market-based financial products, while remaining largely unaffected by or "aloof" from the behavior of markets. Quantifying such risks given limited data is difficult yet crucial for achieving the financing objectives of insurance. Powers begins with a discussion of how risk impacts our lives, health, and possessions and proceeds to introduce the statistical techniques necessary for analyzing these uncertainties. He then considers the experience of risk from the perspectives of both policyholders and insurance companies, and compares their respective responses.

The risks inherent in the private insurance industry lead naturally to a discussion of the government's role as both market regulator and potential "insurer of last resort." Following a thoughtful and balanced analysis of these issues, Powers concludes with an interdisciplinary investigation into the nature of uncertainty, incorporating ideas from physics, philosophy, and game theory to assess science's limitations in predicting the ramifications of risk.

This book provides an overview of classical actuarial techniques, including material that is not readily accessible elsewhere such as the Ammeter risk model and the Markov-modulated risk model. Other topics covered include utility theory, credibility theory, claims reserving and ruin theory. The author treats both theoretical and practical aspects and also discusses links to Solvency II. Written by one of the leading experts in the field, these lecture notes serve as a valuable introduction to some of the most frequently used methods in non-life insurance. They will be of particular interest to graduate students, researchers and practitioners in insurance, finance and risk management.

For much of the twentieth century, industrialized nations addressed social problems, such as workers' compensation benefits and social welfare programs, in terms of spreading risk. But in recent years a new approach has emerged: using risk both as a way to conceive of and address social problems and as an incentive to reduce individual claims on collective resources.
"Embracing Risk" explores this new approach from a variety of perspectives. The first part of the book focuses on the interplay between risk and insurance in various historical and social contexts. The second part examines how risk is used to govern fields outside the realm of insurance, from extreme sports to policing, mental health institutions, and international law. Offering an original approach to risk, insurance, and responsibility, the provocative and wide-ranging essays in "Embracing Risk" demonstrate that risk has moved well beyond its origins in the insurance trade to become a central organizing principle of social and cultural life.

This book is divided into two parts, the first of which seeks to connect the phase transitions of various disciplines, including game theory, and to explore the synergies between statistical physics and combinatorics. Phase Transitions has been an active multidisciplinary field of research, bringing together physicists, computer scientists and mathematicians. The main research theme explores how atomic agents that act locally and microscopically lead to discontinuous macroscopic changes. Adopting this perspective has proven to be especially useful in studying the evolution of random and usually complex or large combinatorial objects (like networks or logic formulas) with respect to discontinuous changes in global parameters like connectivity, satisfiability etc. There is, of course, an obvious strategic element in the formation of a transition: the atomic agents "selfishly" seek to optimize a local parameter. However, up to now this game-theoretic aspect of abrupt, locally triggered changes had not been extensively studied. In turn, the book's second part is devoted to mathematical and computational methods applied to the pricing of financial contracts and the measurement of financial risks. The tools and techniques used to tackle these problems cover a wide spectrum of fields, like stochastic calculus, numerical analysis, partial differential equations, statistics and econometrics. Quantitative Finance is a highly active field of research and is increasingly attracting the interest of academics and practitioners alike. The material presented addresses a wide variety of new challenges for this audience.

In a time before bonds, treasury notes, or central banks, there were tontines. These were schemes in which a group of investors lent money to a government, corporation, or king, similar to a modern-day loan syndicate. But unlike conventional debt, periodic interest payments were distributed only to survivors. As tontine nominees died, the income of survivors correspondingly increased. Morbid, perhaps, but this was one of the earliest forms of longevity insurance in which the pool shared the risk. Moshe A. Milevsky tells the story of the first tontine issued by the English government in 1693, known as King William's tontine, intended to finance the war against French King Louis XIV. He explains how tontines work, the financial and economic thinking behind them, as well as why they fell into disrepute. Milevsky concludes with a provocative argument that suitably modified tontines should be resurrected for twenty-first-century retirement income planning.

Originally published in 1938, this book presents the content of a paper read before the Insurance Institute of London by the leading actuary and statistician Sir William P. Elderton (1877-1962). The text provides an account regarding the impossibility of insurance companies giving people compensation in the event of damage from enemy military action. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in economic history, military history and the insurance industry.

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.

Ausgangspunkt der Arbeit ist die anhaltende Hinwendung der kapitalmarktorientierten Rechnungslegung zur fair-value-Bewertung. Dieser Paradigmenwechsel gibt Anlass zu zwei Fragestellungen. Zum einen wird auf Grundlage einer Analyse der US-GAAP und der IFRS die Konzeption des Wertmassstabes fair value herausgearbeitet und dessen Niederschlag in gegenwartigen Standards dargestellt. Die Rechnungslegung zum fair value wird in einem zweiten Schritt einer umfassenden Zweckmassigkeitsuntersuchung unterzogen, um den Beitrag zur Informationsfunktion zu eroertern. Auf Basis informationsoekonomischer, investitions- und bilanztheoretischer Ansatze werden grundlegende Aussagen zur Informationsqualitat des fair value, zur Begrundbarkeit einer bilanziellen fair-value-Bewertung und zu den Eigenschaften eines fair-value-Gewinns gewonnen. Die Ergebnisse zeichnen ein differenziertes Bild der Entscheidungsnutzlichkeit der Rechnungslegung zum fair value. Wesentliche Vorzuge, wie sie in der Debatte insbesondere von Standardsetzern vorgebracht werden, werden aus konzeptioneller wie empirischer Sicht relativiert.

Originally published in 1931, this book was written to provide actuarial students with a guide to mathematics, with information on elementary trigonometry, finite differences, summation, differential and integral calculus, and probability. Examples are included throughout. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in actuarial practice and its relationship with aspects of mathematics.

The 2008 financial collapse, the expansion of corporate and private wealth, the influence of money in politics-many of Wall Street's contemporary trends can be traced back to the work of fourteen critical figures who wrote, and occasionally broke, the rules of American finance. Edward Morris plots in absorbing detail Wall Street's transformation from a clubby enclave of financiers to a symbol of vast economic power. His book begins with J. Pierpont Morgan, who ruled the American banking system at the turn of the twentieth century, and ends with Sandy Weill, whose collapsing Citigroup required the largest taxpayer bailout in history. In between, Wall Streeters relates the triumphs and missteps of twelve other financial visionaries. From Charles Merrill, who founded Merrill Lynch and introduced the small investor to the American stock market; to Michael Milken, the so-called junk bond king; to Jack Bogle, whose index funds redefined the mutual fund business; to Myron Scholes, who laid the groundwork for derivative securities; and to Benjamin Graham, who wrote the book on securities analysis. Anyone interested in the modern institution of American finance will devour this history of some of its most important players.

Originally published in 1955, on behalf of the Institute of Actuaries and the Faculty of Actuaries, this book forms the first of two volumes on actuarial practice in relation to mortality and other investigations. Taken together, both volumes were written to meet the requirements of the Examination Syllabus of the Institute of Actuaries. Volume one provides 'elementary accounts of the derivation of mortality and other rates according to age, of the smoothing of such rates and of the construction of Mortality and Sickness Tables'. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in the development of actuarial practice.

Originally published in 1939, this book forms the first part of a two-volume series on the mathematics required for the examinations of the Institute of Actuaries, focusing on elementary differential and integral calculus. Miscellaneous examples are included at the end of the text. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in actuarial science and mathematics.

Originally published in 1930, this book was formed from the content of three lectures delivered at London University during March of that year. The text provides a concise discussion of the relationship between theoretical statistics and actuarial science. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in the actuarial profession, statistics and the history of finance.

Originally published in 1932, as part of the Institute of Actuaries Students' Society's Consolidation of Reading Series, this book was written to provide actuarial students with a guide 'to bridging the gap between the strict mathematics of life contingencies and the severely practical problems of Life Office Valuations'. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in the actuarial profession and the history of finance.

There are plenty of books on specialized risk topics but few that deal with the broad diversity and daily applicability of this subject. Risk applications require a robust knowledge of many attributes of this seemingly simple subject. This book teaches the reader through examples and case studies the fundamental (and subtle) aspects of risk - regardless of the specific situation. The text allows the reader to understand the concept of risk analysis while not getting too involved in the mathematics; in this method the reader can apply these techniques across a wide range of situations.

The second edition includes new examples from NASA and several other industries as well as new case studies from legal databases. The many real-life discussion topics enable the reader to form an understanding of the concepts of risk and risk management and apply them to day-to-day issues.

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.

The book will serve as a guide to many actuarial concepts and statistical techniques in multiple decrement models and their application in calculation of premiums and reserves in life insurance products with riders and in pension and employee benefit plans as in these schemes, the benefit paid on termination of employment depends upon the several causes of termination. Multiple state models are discussed to accommodate the insurance products in which the payment of benefits or premiums is dependent on being in a given state or moving between a given pair of states at a given time, for example, disability income insurance model. The book also discusses stochastic models for interest rates and calculation of premiums for some products in this set up. The highlight of the book is usage of R software, freely available from public domain, for computations of various monetary functions involved in insurance business. R commands are given for all the computations.

Most academic and policy commentary represents adverse selection as a severe problem in insurance, which should always be deprecated, avoided or minimised. This book gives a contrary view. It details the exaggeration of adverse selection in insurers' rhetoric and insurance economics, and presents evidence that in many insurance markets, adverse selection is weaker than most commentators suggest. A novel arithmetical argument shows that from a public policy perspective, 'weak' adverse selection can be a good thing. This is because a degree of adverse selection is needed to maximise 'loss coverage', the expected fraction of the population's losses which is compensated by insurance. This book will be valuable for those interested in public policy arguments about insurance and discrimination: academics (in economics, law and social policy), policymakers, actuaries, underwriters, disability activists, geneticists and other medical professionals.

The German health care system is on a collision course with budget realities. Costs are high and rising, and quality problems are becoming ever more apparent. Decades of reforms have produced little change to these troubling trends. Why has Germany failed to solve these cost and quality problems? The reason is that Germany has not set value for patients as the overarching goal, defined as the patient health outcomes achieved per euro expended. This book lays out an action agenda to move Germany to a high value system: care must be reorganized around patients and their medical conditions, providers must compete around the outcomes they achieve, health plans must take an active role in improving subscriber health, and payment must shift to models that reward excellent providers. Also, private insurance must be integrated in the risk-pooling system. These steps are practical and achievable, as numerous examples in the book demonstrate. Moving to a value-based health care system is the only way for Germany to continue to ensure access to excellent health care for everyone.

Non-life insurance pricing is the art of setting the price of an insurance policy, taking into consideration varoius properties of the insured object and the policy holder. Introduced by British actuaries generalized linear models (GLMs) have become today a the standard aproach for tariff analysis.

The book focuses on methods based on GLMs that have been found useful in actuarial practice and provides a set of tools for a tariff analysis. Basic theory of GLMs in a tariff analysis setting is presented with useful extensions of standarde GLM theory that are not in common use.

The book meets the European Core Syllabus for actuarial education and is written for actuarial students as well as practicing actuaries. To support reader real data of some complexity are provided at www.math.su.se/GLMbook.