Living to 100 and Beyond: Implications of Longer Life Spans

Abstract

Life spans have increased remarkably in the last century. There is substantial disagreement and uncertainty among researchers today about the future course of mortality in the developed countries. Will we continue to live ever-longer lives, or is the human life span headed toward a biological upper limit? The answer to this question has important implications for the elderly, their spouses and children, businesses, and our society as a whole. Continued growth in life expectancy with good health would extend our ability to enjoy all the things we cherish.

Simultaneously, this growth would increase our need to prepare carefully for some unexpected challenges. Among these challenges is a greater need by individuals to save for retirement and to prepare for the possibility of becoming dependent upon family members and others for one’s care. Businesses will enjoy access to experienced workers and expanding markets among the elderly, while they also will try to control the post employment costs that longer life spans will generate. Finally, governments will struggle to manage competing interests as the financial needs of the elderly are weighed against other societal obligations.     

Directing strategically financial management education and training

Competence, capability and capacity in financial management are crucial for the success of all commercial organizations. Financial literacy is required of most if not all of the significant decision makers within organizations, no matter what their official status might be, if those organizations are to function effectively. Traditionally, developing this literacy has been seen as just another training issue on the agenda for the company's training department. This paper will argue that financial literacy is so important to organizations that financial management education and training should be seen more as part of the financial management control system of the organization than as a self development issue.

Directors of finance need to become involved in the financial education and training process, particularly at a strategic level, so as to ensure that the company's competence, capability and capacity in financial management are appropriate to the pace and direction of company development.     

Financial and Demographic Risks of a Portfolio of Life Insurance Policies with Stochastic Interest Rates

Abstract

We refer to a recent paper by G. Parker (1997) in which the risk of a portfolio of life insurance policies (namely the risk related to the entire contractual life) is studied by separating the demographic component from the financial component. In our paper, after making a brief summary of Parker’s model, we propose two additional contributions: 1. We first give the problem a different formalization, thus allowing a portfolio risk analysis by management periods and a study of the risk due to the interactions among years;

2. We elaborate on a powerful and flexible algorithm for calculating the probability distribution of the sum of random variables that proves useful to solve not only the problems discussed in this paper concerning the risk analysis but also various other problems.

In the paper, we also show, for both contributions, some applications made under the same financial and demographic assumptions taken by Parker; we also compare our results with Parker’s results.     

Improving the measures of real earnings management

Firms often change their operating policy to meet a short-term financial reporting target. Accounting researchers call this opportunistic action real earnings management (REM). They measure REM by the difference between a firm’s costs and those reported by its industry peers. Firms that pursue distinct competitive strategies also display different cost patterns than peers. However, the models that measure REM do not control for differences in competitive strategy. Hence a researcher can misinterpret a cost difference that stems from a firm’s competitive strategy as REM. The researcher would also find a spurious correlation between earnings management and a firm characteristic that varies with competitive strategy. A cause or effect relationship with earnings management could be wrongfully inferred. I suggest improvements in measurement models to avoid misspecification.

     

Discussion of ‘Making Deferred Taxes Relevant’

Abstract

In this discussion of Brouwer and Naarding's article ‘Making Deferred Taxes Relevant’, which is published in this issue of Accounting in Europe, I question several aspects of their proposal to change the tax accounting standard. I argue that a quest for more value relevance of individual balance sheet items is not a good guideline for accounting standard setting. The distinction between book-first and tax-first temporary differences may be helpful for some analytical purposes, but it is not sufficiently robust to serve as a basis for an accounting standard. However, I agree with the authors that the efforts to improve IAS 12 should not be abandoned.     

Authors’ Reply: Building Better Retirement Income Models - Discussion by Robert J. Myers; Anna Rappaport,January 1997

Abstract

In recent decades, as the use of derivatives by financial institutions has expanded, the shortcomings of historical cost accounting approaches have become increasingly apparent. Since derivatives can create large exposures to risk that go unnoticed under historical standards, the accounting industry has focused on how to change the standards so that these risks are reflected appropriately in a company’s accounting statements. New standards such as SFAS 115 and SFAS 133 have been adopted in part to achieve this goal. However, both of these standards use a piecemeal approach to risk measurement that may be adding to the problem rather than creating a solution. This paper will use a simple equity-indexed annuity to illustrate the problem with historical cost accounting and with the standards that have been adopted to correct it. The paper then argues that the only legitimate means of reflecting risk properly on a company’s accounting statements is to adopt full fair value accounting for all assets and liabilities on the company’s books.     

Terrorism and Critical Infrastructures: Implications for Public–Private Crisis Management

The spate of terrorist attacks in New York, London and Madrid has raised some significant issues for the public management of critical infrastructures. In many countries, privatizations in the 1980s and 1990s have transferred key elements of the critical infrastructure to private companies. Because these infrastructures are of major significance to our societies and economies, they must be protected against prolonged periods of breakdown. The ‘new’ terrorism has the potential to do just that. The management of this new threat is a complex task, which invariably will be undertaken by both public and private actors. They must deal with the core challenges of the prevention of attacks, effective communication of information across organizational boundaries and the ‘ownership’ of crisis decision-making. This article considers these issues within the context of the broader research areas of public management and crisis management.     

The Financial Modeling of Property-Casualty Insurance Companies

This paper describes a financial model currently being used by a major U.S. multiline property-casualty insurer. The model, which was first developed for solvency monitoring purposes, is now being employed for a variety of internal management purposes as well, including (1) the allocation of equity to corporate units, thereby allowing measurements of profitability by business segment and policy year, as well as analysis of the progression of “free surplus,” (2) the analysis of major risks–such as inflation risks, interest rate risks, and reserving risks–that have heretofore been difficult to quantify, and (3) consideration of varying scenarios on the company’s financial performance, both of macroeconomic conditions as well as of the insurance environment.

Many aspects of financial modeling do not differ significantly between life and property-casualty insurers, and these are not discussed in the paper. Rather, the paper focuses on the following topics:

1. Surplus allocation and profitability: how economic surplus and the returns on this surplus are determined by line of business, separately for new business and for the runoff of existing business, and how the progression of free surplus is viewed.

2. Multifaceted risks: how to model risks that affect multiple components of the insurer’s operations, such as economic risks and financial risks. The multiple effects of macroeconomic conditions and changing inflation rates on workers’ compensation claim frequencies and severities complicate the basic interest rate path modeling of life insurance products and annuity contracts.

3. Scenario building: how to construct scenarios of macroeconomic conditions or industry cyclical movements to test the resilience of the company to changing external conditions.     

我国发行通胀指数化债券的必要性与可行性分析

目前国内物价水平上涨较为突出,人民的购买力下降,给我国居民的财富带来了较大损失。股票市场高风险,债券投资品种单一,使得投资者无法有效实现资产保值增值,而通胀指数债券无疑是应对该问题的有效金融工具。本文通过介绍国外通胀指数化债券的发展状况、运作原理,分析我国推行通胀指数债券的必要性、可行性,并借鉴国外通胀指数债券的发展为我国该种债券的推行提出政策建议。本文基于我国经济形势认为我国有必要发行通胀指数债券,并已具备发行通胀指数债券的基本条件。     

Why the technology for low-cost saving products will make marketing the most important product differentiator: Lessons from the automotive industry

Low-cost saving products for consumers are widely seen as the future direction of the retail savings market. The question that must be asked, however, is whether this future is realistic given the technical and business issues that need to be overcome to deliver these products. If these issues can be overcome then it is necessary to wonder what the financial services industry will look like when selling lowcost products. This paper first looks at why low-cost products are a current area of focus for the retail savings industry and the forces that are driving this issue. It then provides an overview as to why there are significant process and technical obstacles to creating low-cost products, and how these could be overcome (as they have been in other industries) if cost reduction is to improve more than incrementally. It concludes with a discussion as to why, if these obstacles are overcome, marketing will be the discipline that will determine an organisation's success with these products. This paper will primarily consider the UK market as this is where the issue has the clearest focus.     

New development: Reviews of public sector performance—groundhog day?

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this article is to canvass, and comment on, the main features of the recently completed Review of Governance, Performance and Accountability legislation/framework at the national level of government in Australia. Most of the Report’s 52 recommendations are procedural and will only be discussed when they may be of particular relevance in a broader context. The review reported on 4 September 2018. It continues the long line of reform reports conducted over the last 30 to 40 years. However, before the review was even completed, the Australian government announced (on 4 May 2018) another wide-ranging Independent Review of the Australian Public Service (APS), with a reference group of national and international experts having ‘diverse public and private sector experience’. Some suggested that the latter review should encompass the findings and recommendations of the former and be considered together, particularly as the announced chair was also a member of the earlier two-person review team. While no one would question the need for continuous learning, the main issue is about effective implementation of agreed recommendations that would improve performance and promote greater public confidence and trust in government.     

Through bubbles and crises: An analysis of the <Emphasis Type="Italic">Journal of Financial Services Marketing</Emphasis> from 2000 to 2012

This article presents an analysis of all publications of the Journal of Financial Services Marketing (JFSM), from 2000 until the end of 2012. The objectives of this study were: (i) to compare the subjects covered by the journal with industry trends, and identify opportunities for future research, and (ii) to assess the journal’s development over time and its influence in the field of financial services marketing. Data for this content analysis was collected manually from the publisher’s Website and from each paper, and a grounded theory approach was used to group the papers into clusters based on emerging themes. The study indicates that JFSM has been successful in covering the industry’s most important trends, including mobile banking, relationship management, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and service quality. A number of gaps were identified, in particular regarding mobile banking services and the impact of new online business models (for example, PayPal, crowdfunding, Bitcoin). These findings should assist JFSM’s editorial board to determine its future direction, and offer readers insight into industry trends and the journal’s role in covering them.     

Nationalised industry responses to the monopolies & mergers commission

Since publishing the original article we have, however, been able to obtain copies of the responses of nearly all those industries covered by Collins’ and Wharton's survey which have had a reasonable time in which to produce them. The one exception is the Anglian Water Authority: well over two years after the Commission's report on it was published, the Authority's response had still not been laid in the library. We gave the responses to the authors, who have summarised the reactions of the industries to the main findings of the Commission in the same format as their table on pages 16 and 17 of the September issue.

As Barrie Collins and Bob Wharton made clear in their article on the Monopolies & Mergers Commission in the September 1984 issue of PUBLIC MONEY, the response of a nationalised industry to a Commission investigation is not, in any meaningful sense of the term, published: it is simply laid in the House of Commons library.     

Jackknife Empirical Likelihood Intervals for Spearman’s Rho

Abstract

In connection with copulas, rank correlation such as Kendall’s tau and Spearman’s rho has been employed in risk management for summarizing dependence between two variables and estimating parameters in bivariate copulas and elliptical models. In this paper a jackknife empirical likelihood method is proposed to construct confidence intervals for Spearman’s rho without estimating the asymptotic variance. A simulation study confirms the advantages of the proposed method.     

“Statistical Independence and Fractional Age Assumptions”, Gordon E. Willmot,January 1997

Abstract

The People’s Republic of China has experienced substantial growth in insurance demand over the last decade. However, development of the related laws and regulations has not kept pace with the development of the insurance industry there. This paper reports on a pioneering study comparing different statutory reserve, solvency, and early warning systems in a sample of countries and regions in three of the world’s important economic regions–Asia, North America, and Europe. It begins with the construction of a model office applicable to the People’s Republic of China’s regulatory framework and unique market environment. Reserve standards and solvency measurement systems in different supervisory frameworks then are applied to the model office. The results are analyzed as a comparative study of the People’s Republic of China’s total assets required for the reserves and solvency margins under the practices of other jurisdictions. Early warning systems also are discussed.     

Strategies for Dividend Distribution: A Review

Abstract

In today’s world of financial uncertainty, one major public concern is to assess (and possibly improve) the stability of companies that take on risks. Actuaries have been aware of that issue for a very long time and have a great experience in modeling the activity of a risk business. During the first part of the twentieth century, they focused on the probability of ruin to assess the stability of their company. In his seminal paper of 1957 Bruno de Finetti criticized this approach and laid the foundations of what would become an increasingly popular topic: the study of dividend strategies. The contributions made by actuaries in that field constitute a substantial body of knowledge, whose interest is relevant not only to insurance but also to a much broader range of areas of practice. In this paper we aim at a taxonomical synthesis of the 50 years of actuarial research that followed de Finetti’s original paper.     

Zur Integration heuristischer Managementstrategien in die Dynamische Finanzanalyse

Dynamic financial analysis (DFA) has become an important tool in analyzing the financial situation of insurance companies. Constant development and documentation of DFA tools has occurred during the last years. However, several questions concerning the implementation of DFA systems have not been answered in the DFA literature to date. One such important issue is the consideration of management strategies in the DFA context. The aim of this paper is to study the effects of different management strategies on a non-life insurer’s risk and return profile. Therefore, we extend the results of a recent working paper by Eling / Parnitzke / Schmeiser (2007) with two variants and test these variants numerically within a DFA simulation study.     

Deprival value and fair value: a reinterpretation and a reconciliation

Measurement is an important current issue for financial accounting standard-setters. Current values are increasingly replacing historical cost measures, but an important unresolved issue is the precise form that current value should take. In this paper two alternative measurement bases that have appeared in accounting standards. Deprivai Value (sometimes called Value to the Business) and Fair Value, are explained and compared. They are then reconciled by making the following three adjustments to their conventional definitions.

(1) In the case of Deprival Value, situations in which net realisable value exceeds replacement cost imply that there is a profitable redevelopment or redeployment opportunity, so that net realisable value is regarded as the appropriate measure of Deprivai Value.

(2) In the case of Fair Value, transactions costs (including installation and removal costs) are added to acquisition values and deducted from disposal values.

(3) In the case of Fair Value, it is assumed that net realisable value represents the ‘highest and best use’, except when it is exceeded by both replacement cost and value in use. In the latter case, ‘highest and best use’ (and therefore Fair Value) is inferred by assuming profit-maximising behaviour by the owner.

It is suggested that the resulting synthesis represents a method of current valuation which is consistent with the objective of measuring the asset in terms of the economic opportunities that are available to its current owner in the condition and location in which it is currently to be found.     

The Actuary’s Role in Managed Care

Abstract

Financial risk is moving to center stage in the $1-trillion U.S. health-care market. The growth of managed care has created new forms of risk and has shifted this risk from insurance companies, which have long dealt with it successfully, to health-care providers and other organizations that have not traditionally accepted the same type and amount of risk. Health-care actuaries have the expertise to help these institutions, and the nation, protect their financial well-being.

Actuaries specialize in the evaluation, quantification, and management of risk. Actuarial models of health-care costs, which help evaluate risk, offer management a window to the managed care world. With these models and other tools, health-care actuaries help organizations succeed in today’s health-care environment by showing how the financial and functional elements of an organization relate to risk.

This report discusses the evolution of the health-care industry and the role that the healthcare actuary has played in that evolution. Eight case studies outline actuarial approaches to assessing risk in the era of managed care by discussing situations affecting five groups: providers, employers, regulators, public policy organizations, and HMOs. Built on experience gained in hundreds of cases, these studies show the range of tasks encountered by managed care actuaries and outline approaches that can help balance risks in today’s health-care system.     

IFRS Ten Years on: Has the IASB Imposed Extensive Use of Fair Value? Has the EU Learnt to Love IFRS? And Does the Use of Fair Value make IFRS Illegal in the EU?

Abstract

This paper is a commentary on issues related to the first decade's mandatory use of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRSs) in the EU. Three specific but related questions are addressed, as in the paper's title. On the first (imposition and use of fair value (FV)), I conclude that the International Accounting Standards Board has not substantially extended the use of FV in its 15 years of work and that most companies hold few assets or liabilities on the FV basis. On the second question (adoption in the EU), I analyse a consultation exercise which strongly suggests that the EU's imposition of IFRSs will continue. On the third question (legality of IFRSs), I explain why recent UK legal opinions that question the legality of reporting under IFRSs are not persuasive.