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IFRS 17 Conference Takeaways

insurance contracts

The introduction of IFRS 17 is one of the largest regulatory shocks to the insurance industry in the past decade. At heart, the accounting standard attempts to combine traditional reporting with forward-looking actuarial calculations.

How do you formulate a Preparatory Crisis Plan?

A new law for the winding up of insurance companies in financial distress states that all Dutch insurers with Solvency II approval are required to formulate a Preparatory Crisis Plan. This article explains the practical considerations that need to be taken into account when formulating this plan.

Impact of climate change on financial institutions

After the long-acknowledged fact that global warming has catastrophic consequences, it is also increasingly recognized that climate change will impact the financial industry. The Bank of England is even of the opinion that climate change represents the tragedy of the horizon: “by the time it is clear that climate change is creating risks that we want to reduce, it may already be too late to act” [1]. This article provides a summary of the type of financial risks resulting from climate change, various initiatives within the financial industry relating to the shift towards a low-carbon economy, and an outlook for the assessment of climate change risks in the future.

Are more complex models always better?

A part of the curriculum of the Econometrics & Mathematical Economics master’s degree given in the VU University Amsterdam is the course Time Series Econometrics. In this course, students are taught how to analyze time series with the aid of ‘state-space models’, on the assumption that observations over time (such as the content of the Nile, for example) are driven by non-observed factors.

A new standard in the Dutch mortgage market

During the past few years, the Dutch mortgage market has changed. Although their name suggests otherwise, fixed rate mortgages are nowadays anything but fixed.