Book Description

All property and casualty insurers are required to carry out loss reserving as a statutory accounting function. Thus, loss reserving is an essential sphere of activity, and one with its own specialized body of knowledge. While few books have been devoted to the topic, the amount of published research literature on loss reserving has almost doubled in size during the last fifteen years.

Greg Taylor's book aims to provide a comprehensive, state-of-the-art treatment of loss reserving that reflects contemporary research advances to date. Divided into two parts, the book covers both the conventional techniques widely used in practice, and more specialized loss reserving techniques employing stochastic models. Part I, Deterministic Models, covers very practical issues through the abundant use of numerical examples that fully develop the techniques under consideration. Part II, Stochastic Models, begins with a chapter that sets up the additional theoretical material needed to illustrate stochastic modeling. The remaining chapters in Part II are self-contained, and thus can be approached independently of each other. A special feature of the book is the use throughout of a single real life data set to illustrate the numerical examples and new techniques presented. The data set illustrates most of the difficult situations presented in actuarial practice. This book will meet the needs for a reference work as well as for a textbook on loss reserving. ... Read more

Book Description

Over recent years the insurance industry has faced a period of rapid change and consolidation, with recent natural and man-made disasters highlighting the problems that the industry faces. Yet this has also been a time of opportunity with the traditional role of insurance giving way to its classification as a asset class. This has resulted in insurance risks now being priced and exchanged on the markets.

In this book, the authors analyze the convergence between the insurance industry and the capital markets. They sumarize the main trends and issues and analyze past events within the industry. Thus, they demonstrate that the current market pressures on insurance companies do not not just create challenges but also new opportunities.

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Reviews (4)

Insightful!
In Insurance from Underwriting to Derivaties, Eric Briys and Francois de Varenne, both Deutsche Bank insurance experts, have written a highly technical, albeit readable, book for their professional peers. They discuss property-casualty insurance, risk, securitizing, pricing and liabilities duration in the United States and Europe. However, it will dawn on the casual reader fairly early that there should be an "experts only" label on the book jacket. Even the basic introduction to property-casualty insurance begins with the presentation of complex mathematical models. More daunting models, charts and graphs elucidate information throughout. Insiders will appreciate this data and the extensive footnotes and references. While this may not be a book for the mid-management reader, we assure you, without risk, that its target audience - financial executives and professionals in the insurance industry - will be very glad to have it.

Good intro on insurance ALM
This is probably the best book on insurance for explaining the poor state of some ALM techniques used in insurance today and why. The authors correctly identify many falacies that actuaries have relied on and how they differ from the more advanced finance that has developed in banking ALM and the capital markets generally.

They do, however, get a bit distracted on a couple of topics, and bogged down in some formulas that I didn't think added much to the disccusion. In those moments, you know you're reading the work of university professors rather than practitioners.

They could have gone further with their ALM thinking. They could have discussed how mergers between insurance and banking would in the future highlight the differences between the current approaches to ALM, and how financial conglomerates will eventually just relegate insurance to one of many liability businesses, apply option-adjusted transfer prices to insurance products, and take the interest rate risk into consolidated positions. It will not be any more complicated than that. They allude to banking ALM, but don't really drive home any of what I thought were the logical conclusions. They were focused on insurance as stand-alone companies and did not address insurance in the context of a financial conglomerate.

Nonetheless, as stated, this is probably the best book on the market as an introduction to insurance ALM and helps dispell many myths and provides some useful history.

Highly Recommended!
In Insurance from Underwriting to Derivaties, Eric Briys and Francois de Varenne, both Deutsche Bank insurance experts, have written a highly technical, albeit readable, book for their professional peers. They discuss property-casualty insurance, risk, securitizing, pricing and liabilities duration in the United States and Europe. However, it will dawn on the casual reader fairly early that there should be an "experts only" label on the book jacket. Even the basic introduction to property-casualty insurance begins with the presentation of complex mathematical models. More daunting models, charts and graphs elucidate information throughout. Insiders will appreciate this data and the extensive footnotes and references. While this may not be a book for the mid-management reader, we from getAbstract assure you, without risk, that its target audience - financial executives and professionals in the insurance industry - will be very glad to have it.

Insurance ALM and Derivatives
As a non insurance specialist, I was curious what the authors have to write about the convergence between the insurance industry and the capital markets. In particular the aspect of derivatives, since I'm in Equity Derivatives. The authors cover nicely the rapid change the insurance industry has faced the last couple of years. Show risk, opportunity, and support many arguments with mathematical models. Even though the authors have an outstanding academic record, the book is aktually fun reading (no boring academic book). References to other articles are extensive and the ALM Survival Toolkit in the Appendix is very well done. Here are the chapters:

1 The Basics of Property-Casualty Insurance
2 Securitizing Insurance Risks
3 Life Insurance in the United States: History of a crisis
4 ALM in Insurance: An Empirical Wander Around Europe
5 Life Insurance Pricing and the Measurement of the Duration and Liabilities
6 A Functional Approach to the Insurance Industry
7 Conclusion and Future Challenges
Appendix: The ALM Survival Toolkit

Mr Briys & Mr de Varenne have confirmend that the French are world-class in derivatives. Bravo! ... Read more

Book Description

This comprehinsive course introduces agents to the business insurance market and how business life insurance can be used for sole proprietorships, partnerships, and corporations.Agents will learn about business continuation buy and sell agreements, split dollar plans, key executive life insurance, taxation issues and much more. ... Read more

Book Description

The Buyer's Guide to Business Insurance is full of step-by-step guidance, ideas, and tips on how to improve your business insurance costs, coverage, and service from both insurance agencies and companies. The authors bring more than 38 years of industry experience to this helpful, non-technical reference guide -- showing you how to get the best property and casualty insurance coverage at the lowest prices.

One of the simplest ways business owners can save money is by re-examining their policy assumptions - an immediate refund may be yours for the asking. Most business insurance policies and rates are based on payrolls, inventories, or sales volumes. Too often, premiums on current policies are based on high values from pre-recession days. Your premium payments can be reduced simply by furnishing your agent or broker with the current real numbers.The Buyer's Guide to Business Insurance will:
* Help you save money and time when purchasing business insurance
* Simplify insurance purchasing with clear directions in an easy-to-use format
* Empower you with inside information about insurance people and industry methods
* Demystify the insurance process
* Eliminate confusion and complexity
* Help you avoid poor service
You will learn:
* What to look for in a policy;
* What questions to ask the broker; and
* How to compare alternative quotes.
Checklists, comparison charts, prepared letters, and forms make this book especially easy to use. If you want to save time and money through a streamlined process, and gain an unbiased viewpoint of your business insurance situation, read The Buyer's Guide to Business Insurance. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Very Informative and well thought out.
Any business can learn from the no nonsense approach to how you should handle your business insurance. The book is easy to read, and answers questions about buying business insurance that you cannot get anywhere else.

Insurance is confusing and this book takes the mystery out of insurance buying. Being afraid to switch insurance brokers could cost you a lot of money and this book tells you how to get more out of your own broker or how to tell if it is time to switch.

I reconmmend this book to any business that has to purchase insurance. ... Read more

Book Description

In the 1980s and early 1990s, America's system of workers' compensation insurance was in trouble. Costs grew rapidly because of escalating medical costs, the increased involvement of attorneys in claims disputes, growing residual markets, and the expansion of compensable injuries. ... Read more

Book Description

Reviews (1)

Thorough and Dense
The scope of Economics of Property-Casualty Insurance rests on the title phrase. Buy this book if you need a direct definition of causes, consequences, and external variables regarding actuarial mathematical conclusions. Do not buy this book if you need a brief and general overview about "the math that actuaries use to rate stuff." In addition, the passive voice and run-on sentences may lose you in a string of thoughts. However, if you understand the P-C Industry very well, you'll probably follow the process just fine. ... Read more

Book Description

This text can be used in International Insurance courses, in topical seminars, and as a supplement to Principles of Insurance/Risk Management or Risk Management texts where the instructor wants a more global emphasis. It will also draw interest in the professional market, with a number of practitioners as contributing authors to the text. ... Read more

Book Description

International Dictionary of Insurance and Finance is an efficient and useful book for business professionals, consumers, business students, insurance professionals, and corporate risk managers. All aspects of international insurance, including life, health, property, casualty, marine, disability, business interruption, copyright and trademark protection, and a host of other insurance topics, are covered. Arranged in an easy-to-use alphabetical format, the Dictionary provides definition, explanation, and illustration of each term. The Dictionary is also multi-disciplinary, covering a number of related terms in finance and investments. ... Read more