Actuaries are heavily involved with regulatory solvency reporting, internal risk and capital management, product development and pricing, reinsurance decisions, and financial reporting. Each of these areas can drive or obscure the decline and ultimate failure of insurers.  Practices also vary widely between insurers and between actuaries. Few actuaries have much exposure to failing insurers and therefore don’t have broad knowledge to bring to bear, and can be less confident in their views given their modest experience of these situations. It’s also often the insurers that are closest to failure that place the most pressure on their actuarial staff and advisors. This results in technical and professionalism challenges for actuaries. The presentation will cover how and why insurers fail, drawing on my direct and indirect experience within South Africa, and experience of others in South African and other countries. This will be covered through case studies and ultimately extracting a set of principles and high risk areas.

Practical outcomes:

• Greater awareness of how and why insurers fail
• Provide practical lists of red flags to look out for
• Suggested steps to deal with these red flags and escalation
• Identify ways of avoiding the red flags in the first place and keeping insurers healthy.
• Grow the list of risks and emerging risks to include in insurers’ ORSAs and risk management processes