The lede:
You sort of knew that when Obama went populist, the victims would be insurance companies. Meanwhile, Iowa piles on. Oh, and if health insurers posted the guts of their rating analysis online, wouldn’t that kind of defeat the purpose of stripping anti-trust exemptions? Meanwhile state regulators point out that separating rate regulation from solvency regulation could kind of send mixed signals. But it does give the New York Times the chance to print this handy chart of prior approval vs. file-and-use states for health insurance.
Elsewhere:
- The soft market continues: down 5% in February. Similarly for Workers Comp Jan. 1 renewals, and exposures are falling as job losses grow.
- Having a regulator who can swoop down with some rules doesn’t sound too cool, so I can see why insurance economists (the Geneva Association) dislike systemic risk regulation on insurers. (And the only P/C company that stank up the joint in 2008 was AIG, and it wasn’t because of its P/C risks.) But none of this explains why the Wikipedia entry on systemic risk leans so heavily on PCI.
- AIG selling its Transatlantic shares.
- I’m not a pension guy, but these swaps sound like tail risk insurance. The actuary/risk manager in me says you better know what other swaps your counterparty is holding. But maybe I’m missing something.
- I think ERM is the Actuarial Full Employment Act of 2010, but Lloyd’s West (vol. II) could be another.
- ERM at the Olympics (except at the opening ceremony, or, tragically, at the sliding center.)
- Alice and i: Who knew the New York Times was so math-happy?
- I think it’s a little early in the year to go off plan. Munich Re seems to disagree. Warren doesn’t seem to mind.
- Vikram: No crying in the board room.
- Mathematicians aren’t screenwriters.
Actuarial Opinions 