A profession serves a public purpose. Consequently, an outline of the history of the actuarial profession must follow the public purposes served by actuaries in applying their basic science. The formation in London in 1762 of the Society for Equitable Assurances on Lives and Survivorships as a mutual company, initiated a process that created a public purpose for actuaries. A mutual insurance co...

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of "Asset Securitization" on bankschr('39') performances. Asset securitization is generally defined as the "financial process by which an owner of an asset, such as a portfolio of loans, receives cash upfront in exchange for the future cash flows from the asset without selling the asset in a normal contractual sales agreement." (Menzi et a...

This paper addresses the problem of dynamic asset allocation under a bounded shortfall risk in a market composed of three assets: cash, stocks and a zero coupon bond. The dynamics of the instantaneous short rates is driven by a Hull and White model. In this setting, we determine and compare optimal investment strategies maximizing the CRRA utility of terminal wealth with and without value at ri...

This paper investigates the determinants of dividend policy for Australian DCs and MCs. In considering dividend payout ratios we adopt two definitions – cash dividends and total dividends. The cash dividend payout ratios consists of cash dividends to net earnings while total dividend payout ratios consists of both cash dividends and share repurchases to net earnings. The determinants of foreign...

A previous paper (West 2005) tackled the issue of calculating accurate uni-, biand trivariate normal probabilities. This has important applications in the pricing of multi-asset options, e.g. rainbow options. In this paper, we derive the Black–Scholes prices of several styles of (multi-asset) rainbow options using change-of-numeraire machinery. Hedging issues and deviations from the Black-Schol...

This paper examines how equity analysts affect corporate liquidity policy and the value of cash. Greater analyst coverage reduces information asymmetry between a firm and outside shareholders and enhances the monitoring process, in turn increasing the value of cash and allowing firms to hold more cash. The cash-to-assets ratio increases by 5.2 percentage points when moving from the bottom analy...

due to the fact that assets are recorded at their historical value and they may include unrealized gains (losses), managers may manipulate earnings through the sale of these assets and provide financial information which is not accurate and reliable. the aim of this study is to investigate the relationship between income from asset sales, earnings change and leverage of companies listed on tehr...

In this paper, we consider the optimal asset allocation strategy of a definedcontribution pension scheme in both accumulation phase and decumulation phase. We model the optimal problem from the view of a defined-contribution pension plan member, who is aiming at maximizing his expected utility from consumptions and bequest. Assume that pension assets can be invested into three assets: cash, sto...

Constant pressure to increase return on assets has firms seeking ways to reduce their working capital costs. In the cash management area, firms are employing more sophisticated collection and disbursement systems. Cash management systems today efficiently speed up collections and, at the end of the day, sweep excess balances into money market accounts. Cash managers focus on finding the optimal...