Risk Management After the Crisis

In this roundtable, an adviser to several central banks and founding member of the Group of 30 discusses regulatory reform and corporate risk management strategies with senior executives from three of the world's largest insurance companies. Much of the discussion attempts to explain why insurance and reinsurance companies have proven less vulnerable to the crisis than commercial and investment banks. Part of the explanation has to do with their financial conservatism, which is attributed to a habitual tendency to decision-making that gives heavy weight to long-term probabilities and risks. But along with this "actuarial" cast of mind is a growing willingness to accept and make use of risk-based capital requirements-a decision-making framework that is, in some respects, in conflict with the accounting and regulatory capital conventions that still prevail in the industry. In particular, "Solvency II"-the risk-based capital guidelines that are set for adoption in 2012 by insurers in the European Union-is held up as a possible model for global use.