Skyrocketing home prices were ignored by the retired masses. With limited income and huge equity stored in their primary houses, thousands of retired home-ownders in the US and UK dipped into the equity in their houses. photo credit: TheTruthAbout… Banks facilitated this through the creation of home equity release products or “reverse mortgages”. The bank…
Moneyweb has an article describing the failure of the South African insurance industry to provide insurance to the wider population, including lower income markets such as the banking sector has done. There are some interesting points to discuss here, and I’m certainly not saying the industry could not do more. However, there are some fairly…
This is a continuation ofa post considering the relevance of an individual investment product development position to a career in actuarial consulting. An old contact mailed me a couple of days ago asking my view on two possible actuarial positions. He was interested in whether either would be suitable preparation for a consulting or actuarial…
An old contact mailed me a couple of days ago asking my view on two possible actuarial positions. He was interested in whether either would be suitable preparation for a consulting or actuarial consulting role in future. I thought the answer might be of broader interest, so I’m copying it, with a little editing to…
Heading off to a Solvency II conference in Prague this evening. QIS 4 is hot news at the moment, and the conference is going to cover many of the details and requirements of the exercise. Large European multinationals have spent enormous effort on the 4 QIS exercises. The data requirements alone are huge. Somehow CEIOPS…
Nationwide Airlines is on the ground. A series of business and operational problems met the global economy of skyrocketing avgas prices and left them insolvent by R172m (assets of R46m less liabilities of R218m). They’ve also left friends of mine stranded in South Africa after a trip from Ireland for another friend’s wedding (congratulations Kay and…
Until very recently, multinationals listed in the US but not resident in the US were required to show a reconciliaton of their local GAAP financial statements to the US GAAP equivalent. Many of these large companies (based in Europe and the Far East) incurred high costs in time, energy and hard cash in preparing US…
Apparently the results for QIS3 are now available. Â QIS3 (“Quiz 3”) is the third Quantitative Impact Study along the path to rolling out Sovlency II for insurance companies between 2010 and 2012. It provides further light on what capital requirements will actually be when Sovlency II comes into effect. Perhaps a warning is required for…
