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. 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…
Iafrica has a story about a court battle against different state retirement ages. Can’t imagine this will go far in the short-term, but might be the beginning of a serious relook at normal retirement age, for men and women, and in in light of trends of extended retirement periods through “mortality improvements”. Mortality improvement is the lowering of mortality over time as a result of several causes, including better medical care, awareness of the dangers of smoking etc. http://business.iafrica.com/news/540145.htm A two-day hearing of a case brought by a group of men challenging the unequal provision of the state old age pension to men at 65 and to women at 60 will begin on Tuesday.
Most people involved with insurance recognise that more premium is better (ceteris paribus of course). This is usually true (and occasionally not) but while some of the reasons are obvious, there are a variety of more subtle factors to take into account. This post will cover many of these factors, and point out a few…
Apparently, it was Benjamin Franklin who said “In this world, nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” Without going into a detailed analysis of whether death is certain, and whether there are tax-haven countries with sufficiently low taxes to stretch the point a little, I have some comments to make on…
