A new method of forecasting the pricing kernel, i.e., stochastic claim inflation or link ratio function, of incurred but not reported (IBNR) claims (in property casualty insurance) from residuals in a dynamic claims forecast model is presented. We employ a pseudo Kalman filter approach by using...

The collapse of Colonial Life Insurance Company (Trinidad) Limited caused one of the most significant financial events in recent history in the Eastern Caribbean region. The significance of the groups collapse warranted the establishment of a commission to gather information on its root causes....

We investigate whether investors price accruals quality, our proxy for the information risk associated with earnings. Measuring accruals quality (AQ) as the standard deviation of residuals from regressions relating current accruals to cash flows, we find that poorer AQ is associated with larger...

This paper examines the conditions necessary for calculating steady state terminal values in equity (company) valuation models. We make explicit use of the fact that a company's income statements and balance sheets can be modeled as a system of difference equations. From these difference...

Risk diversification is one of the many reasons for cross-sector mergers of financialinstitutes. This paper presents a fair-value type asset and liability model in order to identify diversification effects for financial conglomerates (PCs) under various shocks. My analysis for the Netherlands...

Annuities are perceived as being illiquid financial instruments, and this has limited their attractiveness to consumers and inclusion in financial models. However, short positions in annuities can be replicated using life insurance and debt, permitting long positions in annuities to be offset,...

Worldwide life insurance regulations are converging towards stochastic valuation of liabilities. Some regulatory framework requires the actuary to estimate the market consistent value of the liabilities. Often, a risk neutral ESG is used to project and discount future liabilities cash flows....

We provide new empirical evidence concerning the contentious debate over the use of historical cost (HCA) versus mark-to-market (MTM) accounting in regulating financial institutions. These accounting rules, through their interactions with capital regulations, alter financial institutions’...

Berkshire Hathaway has realized a Sharpe ratio of 0.76, higher than any other stock or mutual fund with a history of more than 30 years, and Berkshire has a significant alpha to traditional risk factors. However, we find that the alpha becomes insignificant when controlling for exposures to...

This paper explores innovations in index-based risk transfer products (IBRTPs) as a means to address important insurance market imperfections that have precluded the emergence and sustainability of formal insurance markets in developing countries, where uninsured natural disaster risk remains a...