Enterprise Risk Management Roundtable-Where Are We?
Over the last few years, many financial institutions worldwide have adopted enterprise risk management (ERM) as a way of measuring and managing the risks they assume.

While many CAS members have been exposed to ERM projects in their day-to-day activities, there remains a significant opportunity for many actuaries to play an even bigger role in this exciting field. Over the next decade, ERM should become even more prevalent across all industries as key concepts are better understood and more sources of risk are measured.

This panel will share their experiences, describe how their responsibilities have changed over time, and where they see ERM evolving. They will also discuss some of the challenges they have faced implementing ERM and their "secrets of success" as well as give their views on possible areas for additional research.

Moderator:
John J. Kollar, Vice President - Consulting & Research, ISO
Panelists:
David N. Ingram, Director, Enterprise Risk Management, Standard & Poors
Steve Lowe, Managing Directors, Towers Perrin
Donald F. Mango, Director of Research & Development, Guy Carpenter Instrat

Natural Catastrophes-Have the Rules Changed?
After a relatively long, calm period with few megastorms hitting the U.S. mainland, the past few years have seen a sea change in the frequency and severity of such hurricanes. Is this the point of inflection in a long-term, cyclical pattern or is it just an anomaly where a few hundred-year storms happened in close proximity to one another?

This panel will explore marketplace reactions to this risk, insurer attitudes about how to “subsidize” it, progress of current coping mechanisms, and their impact on insurer and reinsurer capacity.

Moderator:
Michael A. Walters, Consulting Actuary, Towers Perrin
Panelists:
James W. Jonske, Assistant Vice President, Allstate Insurance Company
Stephen J. Mildenhall, Executive Vice President, Aon Re Services
Robert L. Ricker, President and Executive Director, Citizens Property Insurance Corporation; Chairman, Florida Commission on Hurricane Loss Projection Methodology

Predictive Modeling-Panacea or Placebo?
With the introduction of statistical software packages and faster computing power, insurers have been able to take advantage of advanced statistical techniques such as spatial smoothing, distributional fitting, and the now popular generalized linear modeling techniques, to develop more sophisticated ratemaking methods and rating plans.

But where is the line between sophistication and complication for complication's sake? Do the increased number of rating variables and interactive tables in a rating plan make it better or just more complicated? Have we forgotten Occam's Razor (the rule that scientific and philosophic theories should be kept as simple as possible, all else equal)?

This session will focus not on the fundamental and theoretical concepts of predictive modeling as previous sessions on this topic have, but on the practical considerations around implementation, maintenance, and monitoring of the resulting rating plans.

Are the modelers the only ones in the company now who truly understand the rating plans? How are insurers to manage the renewal books that were written under the traditional rating plans? Outside of the company, how do others view these plans? Do regulators have the tools necessary to understand these models? How does competition monitor and emulate, and distributors understand and explain changes to customers from these complex rating plans? Have these new rating plans bore the fruit promised?

Moderator:
Serhat Guven, Consultant, EMB America LLC
Panelists:
Howard Eagelfeld, Actuary, Florida Office of Insurance Regulation
Keith Toney, Vice President, Choicepoint Insurance Analytics, Insurequote, Inc
Jonathan White, Assistant Vice President and Actuary, The Hartford Financial Services Group

International Reserving Practices
Have you ever wondered what it's like to be a reserving actuary in a different region of the world? Regulatory oversight, accounting standards, reserving practices, methodologies, and techniques for estimating reserves vary throughout the world. As Casualty Actuarial Society members become more involved in global insurance issues, there is a need for a better understanding of the differences as well as similarities of various reserving practices throughout the world.

The panel will discuss reserving practices and regulatory requirements in their respective country/region, the role of the actuary in the reserving process, as well as their country's experience with establishing accurate reserves.

Moderator:
John C. Narvell, Global Chief Actuary, GE Insurance Solutions
Panelists:
Catherine Cresswell, Senior Consultant, Watson Wyatt Limited
Junji Furuki, Actuary, Sompo Japan Insurance
Ricardo A. Tagliafichi, Professor, University of Buenos Aires