Insurance and Issues in Financial Soundness


Book Description

This paper explores insurance as a source of financial system vulnerability. It provides a brief overview of the insurance industry and reviews the risks it faces, as well as several recent failures of insurance companies that had systemic implications. Assimilation of banking-type activities by life insurers appears to be the key systemic vulnerability. Building on this experience and the experience gained under the FSAP, the paper proposes key indicators that should be compiled and used for surveillance of financial soundness of insurance companies and the insurance sector as a whole.




Global Financial Stability Report, April 2016


Book Description

The current Global Financial Stability Report (April 2016) finds that global financial stability risks have risen since the last report in October 2015. The new report finds that the outlook has deteriorated in advanced economies because of heightened uncertainty and setbacks to growth and confidence, while declines in oil and commodity prices and slower growth have kept risks elevated in emerging markets. These developments have tightened financial conditions, reduced risk appetite, raised credit risks, and stymied balance sheet repair. A broad-based policy response is needed to secure financial stability. Advanced economies must deal with crisis legacy issues, emerging markets need to bolster their resilience to global headwinds, and the resilience of market liquidity should be enhanced. The report also examines financial spillovers from emerging market economies and finds that they have risen substantially. This implies that when assessing macro-financial conditions, policymakers may need to increasingly take into account economic developments in emerging market economies. Finally, the report assesses changes in the systemic importance of insurers, finding that across advanced economies the contribution of life insurers to systemic risk has increased in recent years. The results suggest that supervisors and regulators should take a more macroprudential approach to the sector.




Life Insurance Trends at Midcentury


Book Description

Legal reserve life insurance in the United States and Canada as a modern instrument for meeting the quest for economic security, has attained size and significance unparalleled elsewhere in the world. It holds in a fiduciary capacity more than $60 billion and affects the lives of half the population as owners of life insurance and annuity contracts. Still in process of evolution, it helps to shape the pattern of life and is at the same time being shaped by its own environment. This third volume of lectures issued under the auspices of the S. S. Huebner Foundation for Insurance Education deals with significant trends and problems in life insurance at the midpoint of the twentieth century. In so doing, it bears testimony to the vitality and adaptive power of this modem device for sharing one another's burdens.




OECD Sovereign Borrowing Outlook 2021


Book Description

This edition of the OECD Sovereign Borrowing Outlook reviews developments in response to the COVID-19 pandemic for government borrowing needs, funding conditions and funding strategies in the OECD area.




Life Insurance in Europe


Book Description

This book examines the challenges for the life insurance sector in Europe arising from new technologies, socio-cultural and demographic trends, and the financial crisis. It presents theoretical and applied research in all areas related to life insurance products and markets, and explores future determinants of the insurance industry’s development by highlighting novel solutions in insurance supervision and trends in consumer protection. Drawing on their academic and practical expertise, the contributors identify problems relating to risk analysis and evaluation, demographic challenges, consumer protection, product distribution, mortality risk modeling, applications of life insurance in contemporary pension systems, financial stability and solvency of life insurers. They also examine the impact of population aging on life insurance markets and the role of digitalization. Lastly, based on an analysis of early experiences with the implementation of the Solvency II system, the book provides policy recommendations for the development of life insurance in Europe.










Bank On Yourself


Book Description

The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and BusinessWeek bestseller Bank On Yourself: The Life-Changing Secret to Growing and Protecting Your Financial Future reveals the secrets to taking back control of your financial future that Wall Street, banks, and credit card companies don’t want you to know. Can you imagine what it would be like to look forward to opening your account statements because they always have good news and never any ugly surprises? More than 100,000 Americans of all ages, incomes, and backgrounds are already using Bank On Yourself to grow a nest-egg they can predict and count on, even when stocks, real estate, and other investments tumble. You’ll meet some of them and hear their stories of how Bank On Yourself has helped them reach a wide variety of short- and longterm personal and financial goals and dreams in this book.




21st Century Investing


Book Description

How institutions and individuals can address complex social, financial, and environmental problems on a systemic level—and invest in a more secure future. Investment today has evolved from the basic, conventional approach of the past. Investors have come to recognize the importance of sustainable investment and are more frequently considering environmental and social factors in their decisions. Yet the complexity of the times forces us to recognize and transition to a third stage of investment practice: system-level investing. In this paradigm-shifting book, William Burckart and Steve Lydenberg show how system-level investors support and enhance the health and stability of the social, financial, and environmental systems on which they depend for long-term returns. They preserve and strengthen these fundamental systems while still generating competitive or otherwise acceptable performance. This book is for those investors who believe in that transition. They may be institutions, large or small, concerned about the long-term stability of the environment and society. They may be individual investors who want their children and grandchildren to inherit a just and sustainable world. Whoever they may be, Burckart and Lydenberg show them the what, why, and how of system-level investment in this book: what it means to manage system-level risks and rewards, why it is imperative to do so now, and how to integrate this new way of thinking into their current practice. “Burckart and Lydenberg are the Wayne Gretzkys of investing: Showing us not where investing is, but where it’s going.” —Jon Lukomnik, Managing Partner, Sinclair Capital; Senior Fellow, High Meadows Institute




OECD Insurance Statistics 2020


Book Description

This annual publication shows official insurance statistics for all OECD countries including data on premiums collected, claims, and commissions by type of insurance; investments by type of investment; and numbers of companies and employees...