ARTICLES GÉNÉRAUX

SEPTEMBER 11, TEN MONTHS LATER
by Rémi Moreau

SYMPOSIUM SUR LA BANCASSURANCE

PRÉSENTATION ÉDITORIALE
par Rémi Moreau

LA BANCASSURANCE : LES NOUVEAUX DÉFIS STRATÉGIQUES
par Gilles Benoist

LA BANCASSURANCE – L’EXPÉRIENCE DE LA BANQUE TORONTO-DOMINION
par Bernard Dorval

L'ÉVOLUTION DE LA CAISSASSURANCE AU QUÉBEC
par François Joly

ARTICLES ÉVALUÉS

LITIGATION PRIVILEGE – RECENT DEVELOPMENTS AND FUTURE TRENDS
by Ani M. Abdalyan

LES RECOURS COLLECTIFS ET L'INDUSTRIE DE L'ASSURANCE
par Jean Saint-Onge et Guy Lemay

LA TITRISATION DU RISQUE DE CATASTROPHE
par Karim Mimouni

EMPIRICAL ANALYSES ON "THE UNDERWRITING CYCLE": AN EVALUATION
by Emilio Venezian

Chroniques

FAITS D’ACTUALITÉ
par Rémi Moreau

CHRONIQUE ACTUARIELLE
par divers collaborateurs du Groupe-conseil Aon

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SEPTEMBER 11, TEN MONTHS LATER
by Rémi Moreau

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
by Ani M. Abdalyan

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
par Jean Saint-Onge et Guy Lemay

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
par Karim Mimouni

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
by Emilio Venezian

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.