Analysis

• Caution: capital models at work

  06 November 2013

  The prospect of Solvency II led many insurers to spend millions building internal capital models and the time has come to make them work for the business. But basing strategy on a tool that has been developed primarily with compliance in mind is not without risk, as Rob Collinson explains

• Will RMS(one) be the one?

  01 November 2013

  The one system to manage all cat exposures and risks, that is. Early testers are enthusiastic, but RMS's claims for its new platform will take some time to assess, and the cost of using it could be a hindrance. Christopher Cundy reports

• Technology Guide 2013-14: vendors react to Solvency II delays

  29 October 2013

  Both users and vendors of risk management systems have faced difficult decisions as a result of the further delay in Solvency II implementation. We look at the opportunities and problems created by this and issues such as: do faster systems have to be more complex, as well as more expensive, and will vendors offer more transparency into their models?

• Efficient asset allocation with least squares Monte Carlo

  23 October 2013

  Traditional methods of allocating assets fall short in several key aspects. In this paper, Romain Lombardo and Alexis Bailly show how the LSMC approach can be used to optimise asset allocation for insurers in a Solvency II world

• The technologies reshaping insurance

  18 October 2013

  The insurance industry doesn't often evoke science fiction. But recent technological advances have been so drastic they could have leapt from the pages of Isaac Asimov. Sarfraz Thind reports

• Understand, don't blend, cat models

  11 October 2013

  The changes afoot in insurance markets make an "own view of risk" essential to the future of today's firms – and the best approach is not through blending of catastrophe models, argues Mike Duffy

• Communication is the next step in internal model validation

  09 October 2013

  Internal model validation has evolved rapidly in the last three years but the key to getting real value from the process in 2014 is to focus on communication, say Charl Cronje and Tom Durkin

• Early warning indicators need further refinement

  04 October 2013

  The UK's Prudential Regulation Authority is currently trialling the use of early warning indicators (EWIs) to monitor the outputs from insurers' internal models. With plans to extend their application across Europe, Russell Ward, Eoin O'Byrne and Lyndsay Wrobel examine how EWIs might perform in practice – and find there is room for improvement

• Lloyd's Savage highlights benefits of Solvency II readiness

  02 October 2013

  Luke Savage, director of finance and operations at Lloyd's, tells InsuranceERM about the market's reaction to low investment yields, its capital management plans, how it could yet be designated "systemically risky" - and why it's disbanded its Solvency II team.

• Hopes build for better treatment of infrastructure investment under Solvency II

  27 September 2013

  Infrastructure investments provide a great match for insurers' liabilities, but Solvency II's crude view of the investment risk means money is not flowing as fast as it could. Milliman and JP Morgan Asset Management set out the justification for a review