Insurance Company

A financial entity that pools risk and provides insurance coverage to individuals and organizations.

Moshe Milevsky Discusses Tontines for the 21st Century

Moshe Milevsky is an Associate Professor in Finance at the Schulich School of Business at York University, and he is one of the world’s leading authorities on retirement income.  Professor Milevsky recently published and presented an...

The Case for Mutual Insurance Companies

The best interests of financial services consumers are much better aligned with a mutual insurance company than a stock insurance company.

Mutual insurance companies are owned by policyholders. Owners of an insurance contract issued by a mutual company are both customers and owners of the insurance company.

Stock-based insurance companies are owned by shareholders, so their focus is divided between customers and shareholders.

Mutual insurance companies are a form of cooperative where individuals voluntarily associate to form an...

Are Inflation Adjusted Annuities Worth the Cost?

Inflation protection for fixed annuities would seem to be a sensible consideration given the fact that central banks around the world are doing everything they can to reflate in the wake of an historic deleveraging.

After all, the worst possible place to be if and when inflation does kick-in is on the receiving end of nominal (not adjusted for inflation) fixed payments, and most fixed annuities fit this description perfectly.

While the inflation protection makes sense in theory, it turns-out that inflation-protected annuities may not be so sensible in practice...

A Capital Market for the Risks of Aging Societies

Swiss Re is very good at highlighting the scale of longevity risk on a global basis and the challenges--financial and otherwise--that result from aging societies. A recent report from Swiss Re highlights the magnitude of the longevity risk challenge and calls for the development of a capital market to deal with the high hurdle of funding longer lives. Points from the report that highlight the scope of longevity risk include: The aggregate value of defined benefit pension liabilities on a global...

Research Highlights Fixed SPIAs

Retirement researcher Wade Pfau published a research paper titled “An Efficient Frontier for Retirement Income .” Pfau’s paper analyzes the relative merits of equities, bonds, fixed single premium immediate annuities (SPIA), inflation -adjusted SPIAs and variable annuities with guaranteed lifetime withdrawal benefits ( GLWB ). Each of these allocation options are examined in the context of achieving retirement spending goals. Pfau creates an efficient frontier for a...

Pages