The paper outlines some background thinking to current pensions issues. In particular it addresses areas where the profession requires to articulate clearer views or reasoning about its position.

The text of these papers, together with the abstract of the discussion held by the Faculty of Actuaries on 15 March 2004, are printed in British Actuarial Journal, 10, IV, 685-898.

This report, which was sponsored by the Life Board of the Faculty and Institute of Actuaries, was originally published in November 1997.

Because it is referred to several times in the paper ‘Reserving, Pricing and Hedging for Policies with Guaranteed Annuity Options’, and in the discussions of the paper, and because it is not easily accessible elsewhere, it is printed here as a background paper for reference.

This paper considers the market or economic valuation and the hedging of Limited Price Indexed (LPI) liabilities. This involves finding optimal static and dynamic hedging strategies which minimise the riskiness of the investment portfolio relative to the liability.

In this paper we do not aim to find the perfect hedge in a perfect world. Instead, it is assumed that optimisation is restricted to three commonly used asset classes in pension funds: cash; long-term (or irredeemable) fixed-interest bonds; and long-dated index-linked bonds. The economic value of the liability is then defined as the value of the best matching portfolio using a mean/variance type of loss function. Specifically, we adopt the risk minimising approach of Föllmer & Sondermann (1986) and Schweizer & Föllmer (1988). Even with such a simple loss function, establishing the theoretically optimal solution can be difficult. We propose that a practical solution close to the theoretical optimum can be found using two approximations. First, we approximate the ‘true’ stochastic economic model by a vector autoregressive model of order one. Second, we use a sequence of linearisations to approximate non-linear by straightforward quadratic minimisation problems.

The proposed approach is illustrated with various numerical examples, and we compare the results of the approximately optimal hedging strategy with static strategies.

The Report of the Equitable Life Enquiry, by The Right Honourable Lord Penrose, was delivered to Treasury Ministers on 23 December 2003, and was published on 8 March 2004 by The Stationary Office (also at www.hm-treasury.gov.uk).

Members were encouraged to read the report in advance of the meeting, in particular Chapters 19 and 20; Lord Penrose's evidence to the Treasury Select Committee on 16 March 2004; and the statement issued jointly by the Presidents of the Faculty of Actuaries and the Institute of Actuaries, which appeared on page 4 of the April 2004 copy of The Actuary.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role that fixed income securities should play in pension scheme investment. In this paper I look at the investment characteristics of the various bond asset classes, including the nature of the income streams produced. I also look at the relationships between the various asset classes and their stability over time. I then look at the usefulness of the asset classes in the context of a pensioner portfolio, considering both capital values and income streams. I look at skew and excess kurtosis in the distributions of asset returns and consider the effect of their existence on the decision making process. Given that most asset models are calibrated using historical data, I do not carry out any modelling and instead analyse past data. Finally, I discuss practical issues that need to be considered, particularly in a United Kingdom context.

The lecture describes the European Convention on Human Rights, how it differed from the legal system in England until the enactment of the Human Rights Act 1998, and what has happened since then, giving many examples.

Dynamic financial analysis has become one of the important tools that actuaries use to model the underwriting and investment operations of insurance companies. The first step in carrying out the analysis is to investigate the most important factors affecting company performance. This paper identifies the determinants of the performance of United Kingdom general insurance companies using a panel data set consisting of economic data and Financial Services Authority/Department of Trade and Industry returns over the period 1986 to 1999. Three performance measures are used to capture different aspects of insurance operations. These measures are related to a number of economic and firm specific variables, chosen on the basis of relevant theory and literature. An ordinary least squares regression model and two panel data models are estimated for each of three performance measures. This paper also addresses several important econometric problems that are usually ignored in applied work in the context of panel data analysis. Based on the empirical results, this study finds that liquidity, unexpected inflation, interest rate level and underwriting profits are statistically significant determinants of the performance of U.K. general insurers.

The asset allocation is a crucial decision for pension funds, and this paper analyses the economic factors which determine this choice. The analysis proceeds on the basis that, in the absence of taxation, risk sharing and default insurance, the asset allocation between equities and bonds is indeterminate and governed by the risk/return preferences of the trustees and the employer. If the employing company and its shareholders are subject to taxation, there is a tax advantage in a largely bond allocation. Risk sharing between the employer and the employees often means that one group favours a high equity allocation, while the other favours a low equity allocation. Underpriced default insurance creates an incentive for a high equity allocation. When taxation, risk sharing and underpriced default insurance are all present, it is concluded that the appropriate asset allocation varies with the circumstances of the scheme; but that a high equity allocation is probably inappropriate for many private sector pension schemes.