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CONTENTS OF THE JULY 2002 ISSUE
Vol.70(2)
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![]() ARTICLES GÉNÉRAUX SEPTEMBER 11, TEN MONTHS LATER
PRÉSENTATION ÉDITORIALE
LA BANCASSURANCE : LES NOUVEAUX DÉFIS STRATÉGIQUES
LA BANCASSURANCE – L’EXPÉRIENCE DE LA BANQUE TORONTO-DOMINION
L'ÉVOLUTION DE LA CAISSASSURANCE AU QUÉBEC
ARTICLES ÉVALUÉS LITIGATION PRIVILEGE – RECENT DEVELOPMENTS AND FUTURE
TRENDS
LES RECOURS COLLECTIFS ET L'INDUSTRIE DE L'ASSURANCE
LA TITRISATION DU RISQUE DE CATASTROPHE
EMPIRICAL ANALYSES ON "THE UNDERWRITING CYCLE": AN
EVALUATION
Chroniques FAITS D’ACTUALITÉ
CHRONIQUE ACTUARIELLE
THE INTERNET SURFER PAGE
SEPTEMBER 11, TEN MONTHS LATER
In the months just following September 11, 2001, it was too soon to make an accurate evaluation of insurance claims, whether for human or financial losses. Ten months later, the author tries to outline the overall dimensions of the tragedy. Since last September, our lives have been irreversibly changed. In our personal life, we have had to confront a spectrum of emotions, from horror to admiration for heroic efforts. In the business milieu, many firms have been forced to return to basics in their techniques and procedures. In the insurance field, the terrorist acts of September 11 actually caused the most catastrophic losses ever experienced by property and casualty insurers. Add in the impact of strong rate increases and it is easy to see why insurers and reinsurers have been forced to go back to basic rules in underwriting for large risks. The fateful date also has many lessons to teach us about new approaches
to risk management; building codes; and the need for governments and industry
to cooperate in finding financial solutions to cover mega-terrorist losses.
LITIGATION PRIVILEGE – RECENT DEVELOPMENTS
AND FUTURE TRENDS
The purpose of this paper is to describe key aspects of the law of litigation
privilege in Ontario.2 Since the legal system has long assumed that the
“adversarial nature of litigation is the best method to get at the truth”3,
this paper will examine the origins of the test to define litigation privilege.
Since the conduct of litigation is dynamic,4 this paper will examine the
dynamics of litigation privilege. Since technology is playing an increasingly
central role in the practice of law, this paper will also examine the question
of the attachment of litigation privilege to computer generated data.
LES RECOURS COLLECTIFS ET L'INDUSTRIE DE L'ASSURANCE
We observe that insureds have increasingly used class actions as a procedural vehicle to exercise their rights against insurers. This tendency can be explained in part by the phenomenal settlements concluded in the U.S. and Canada in matters relating to business practices of certain insurers and, more particularly, in the class action matters relating to whole life participating insurance policies on the issue of premium offset or “vanishing premiums”. However, North American Courts are not very inclined to authorize such
class actions against insurers, primarily due to the difficulty of establishing
common issues between class members, especially in situations where the
recourse is founded on misrepresentations.
LA TITRISATION DU RISQUE DE CATASTROPHE
This article explores the manner in which the assignment of risks associated with catastrophic events has evolved since the 1990s in the United States. In this regard, we discuss the conditions which have favoured the development of insurance and reinsurance markets and present a few structures which have emerged on the American market. In implementing those structures, insurers quickly realized that these
instruments were difficult to evaluate because of such things as the ambiguity
of the factors affecting risk premiums. In this text, we borrow a simple
model from Froot and Posner (2000) who adopt a portfolio approach to introduce
the impact of uncertainty regarding the possibility of catastrophic events.
Finally, we study the impact of certain events like those of September
11, 2001 on risk-management practices in the insurance sector.
EMPIRICAL ANALYSES ON "THE UNDERWRITING CYCLE":
AN EVALUATION
A number of papers on the underwriting cycle have appeared in the literature in the last 15 years. Despite the reviewing process many of these papers have potentially serious problems. Subsequent writers have cited the earlier work uncritically and sometimes perpetuated the errors in their own work. This article points out four problem areas and discusses some of the effects. One potentially far-reaching problem has been the neglect of taxation issues in the financial models used to motivate analysis. If the financial models are incomplete by ignoring taxes then the premium to surplus ratio becomes an omitted variable and adding such variables related to it in empirical analyses could lead to spurious regression due to the misspecification. Other problems include the use of dangerous statistical methods without proper safeguards, the use of data that are inappropriate for the intended application. |
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Last updated: 02-07-31
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