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CONTENTS OF THE OCTOBER 2003 ISSUE
Vol.71(3)
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Page éditoriale /
Editorial Page Articles généraux / General articles La
crise du SRAS Articles évalués / Evaluated articles Gestion des risques et gouvernance d’entreprise
La satisfaction des patients américains sous le régime
« Managed Care »
Underwriting Profits : Are the Data Consistent with
« Rationally Priced »Insurance Cycles ? Columns Étude
technique
Chronique actuarielle
Faits d’actualité – Assurance -
Gestion des risques
Assurances et gestion des risques
Chronique des chaires en assurance et en
gestion des risques
Chronique juridique
Chronique de documentation
La crise du SRAS The author has tracked down the evolution of SARS crisis in the world, from February to June 2003. As he was finishing this, there have been 8,500 SARS cases reported and 810 deaths. So, it is not one of the true mass killers it was supposed to be in comparison with other world past or actual pandemic, such as aids, plague, malaria, tuberculosis, diarrhea diseases, measle, thyphoid fever, or influenza. After some general comments of the virus, called Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, he observes the appearance of that pneumonia-like virus in several Asia-Pacific countries and its subsequent spread to Canada in the Toronto area. He comments on the role played by the World Health Oganization. Finally, he describes its impact on the economy in general, particularly the tourist industry, and its minor effect on the insurance industry, because SARS is excluded from several insurance policies. Finally, lessons are drawn, such as some steps to prevent and control the virus propagation.
Les fusions dans le secteur de l’assurance : des mariages
de raison parfois mouvementés
Mergers are an important aspect of
today’s world economy. The insurance sector is also concerned by this external
growth strategy. A successful example is the one of AXA whose fast international
growth is partly the result of this strategy. Whatever the success of AXA in
merging various companies world-wide, it is necessary to avoid a too idealictic
view on merger consequences and, on the contrary, to acknowledge potential
economic and managerial difficulties. The aim of this article is to describe
difficulties which could arise after a merger in the insurance sector. A
case-study approach will be used for this purpose, using the case of a merger
between two French insurance companies. After presenting the history and the
culture of both companies, the merger will be described. The main economic and
managerial difficulties will be highlighted.
Gestion des risques et gouvernance d’entreprise NOTE: Texte présenté à l’atelier « Remise en question de la gouvernance au sein des entreprises : oui mais encore » organisé par M. Marc Renaud, président du Conseil de recherches en sciences humaines du Canada, dans le cadre de La Conférence de Montréal, le 7 mai 2003.
We take up the question of
potential conflicts between the objectives of risk management policies and those
connected with maximization of the firm’s value. This question is a timely one,
since many firms have special committees devoted to the evaluation and
management of risks—banks and insurance companies in particular. In the wake of
the Enron affair, various proposals have been formulated regarding the
composition of the different committees set up by boards of directors. In the
financial literature, it is now a widely accepted fact that risk management
issues can give rise to conflicts of interest between heads of firms and
shareholders, notably when executives are remunerated in stock options. In our
opinion, the board’s evaluation and risk management committee must be composed
only of independent directors who hold no options to purchase the firm’s shares.
La satisfaction des patients américains sous le
régime « Managed Care »
In the United States, « Health
Maintenance Organizations » (HMO) undertook to master the growth of the
costs of the health. Numerous patients complained about the quality of the care
under this regime and about limitations that HMO imposed on them, in particular
in access to care. To the quality care issues under this regime added the
anxieties concerning patients’ satisfaction. Has the former degraded under the
regime HMO? On this subject, numerous studies compare the satisfaction of the
patients under the regime HMO to that of the patients in the traditional system
with « Fee-For-Service payment » (FFS). They also concern the vulnerable
patients, such as the old or deprived persons, illustrating how difficult it is
to measure of quality.
Underwriting Profits : Are the Data Consistent with “Rationally Priced”
Insurance Cycles?
Cummins and Outreville (1987)
suggested that the cyclical nature of insurance profits might result from the
combination of insurance prices created in an environment of rational
expectations with lags in information and in profit reporting. Their theoretical
model predicts the autoregressive properties of underwriting profits. They
interpret the model as an AR2 process, and from this, they derive the range of
cycle lengths and conclude that the hypothesis is in general agreement with the
empirical results they present. This paper looks in more detail at empirical
tests of this “rational pricing with lags” model of insurance cycles. We find
the predicted cycle lengths are often not in the same range as most of the
observed cycle lengths. The predicted joint range of the two AR2 coefficients is
fairly restricted and the empirical data seem to be away from this region. The
values of R2 predicted by the theory are lower than most of
those observed empirically. We show that under the Cummins and Outreville
hypothesis, the autocorrelation coefficients at lags of three or more should be
zero. Data by line of insurance from the United States for the periods 1960 to
1980 and 1973 to 1997, from Europe for the years 1955 to 1979, and from Asia for
various periods show that this consequence of the model is contrary to the
empirical evidence.
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2003
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