The first phase of uninhabitability is uninsurability – Michael Mann, renowned climate scientist.
As climate risks to property increase, the people who live in places exposed to those risk are less and less able to afford to insure their properties. Which will start to create climate ghettos. And the housing crisis in Australia will worsen, as areas in areas with high risk of disaster become uninsurable.Continue Reading
Is the NSW Covid wave peaking? NSW Health reporting suggests it is, but their statistics don’t really report that view.
On Boxing Day here in Sydney, there is another Covid wave, and some people are curious to know if it’s peaked yet. I keep thinking I’ve written my last Covid reflection, but there is always another actuarial angle! This time it is to share an insight from one of my fellow actuaries and Covid analyst, Karen Cutter.Continue Reading
What do we know about the risks of Long Covid? A closer look at Long Covid, what we know about how risky it is, and how serious it is. It can be very serious, enough that avoiding infection is a good idea. But how likely is it? Very hard to measure.Continue Reading
In the USA, cases are increasing again, but deaths from COVID19 are still falling from the April peak. The US is now identifying more mild cases, but the recent increase in cases is almost certain to lead to more deaths per day in a the next few weeks. It’s beenContinue Reading
Get a bunch of actuaries together (particularly life insurance actuaries) and sooner or later we will start talking about pandemics. Fortunately for us, our experiences are almost entirely theoretical. We’ve lived through AIDS (for the life insurance actuary, a very slow-moving pandemic, where the challenge was more about underwriting thanContinue Reading
Regular readers will know I take a keen interest in the regulatory role of the Appointed Actuary. See my previous posts here, here and, most recently, here. This week APRA released a consultation package with proposals on how the role should be changed to make the role fit better into the regulatoryContinue Reading
One of my most visited posts is about the likelihood of ships disappearing without a trace. Sadly it is getting renewed attention because a huge Korean cargo ship has disappeared off the coast of South America. So far only two of the 24 crew members have been found. It is trueContinue Reading
Regular readers of this blog might recall some previous posts of mine on the role of the Appointed Actuary. APRA had asked the Industry and the Actuarial profession for views on how the role of the Appointed Actuary should change, given difficulties in recruiting (particularly in life insurance) and a perceivedContinue Reading
Late last year, there was a flurry of mainstream interest in mortality statistics – here is the New York Times reporting on a study by two economists (Ann Case and Angus Deaton) The paper: documents a marked increase in the all-cause mortality of middle-aged white non-Hispanic men and women in the United StatesContinue Reading
In June 1958, under Alf Pollard’s leadership, Australia’s first commercial computer was installed in the MLC buildings in North Sydney. MLC was (and still is) one of Australia’s biggest life insurers. The computer weighed five tonnes, had a room of its own, cost £160,000 and took 20 million times longerContinue Reading