Government
The Two Negotiations of the NHS
How the NHS learned to be ruthless with its own staff and generous to everyone else
C.J. Marsden
Writes anonymously on the political economy of British professional services.
Insurance
The Shibboleth Premium
Why the bulk annuity industry pays a fortune to avoid a fortnight of training
Insurance
Four-fifths of 2008: what the ECB's private credit stress test actually says
The industry read the ECB's special feature as reassurance. Read in the original, it dismantles the two defences the sector relies on — and raises the subprime comparison itself. By Johan Landman.
Insurance
Whose favour is it anyway? Debt-for-nature and the privatised guarantee
The new wave of debt conversions replaces taxpayer-backed guarantees with commercial insurance and philanthropic first-loss capital. The arithmetic has to give somewhere — and it will not be the investor's spread.
Insurance
Property companies wearing pensioners as armour
Why the annuity industry's entry into housing is not an investment story but a constitutional one — and why the matching adjustment, not ownership share, is where the risk lives.
Insurance
Patient Capital, Public Risk
Amanda Blanc says insurers stand ready to fund Britain's new towns. Read the small print, and the offer is to book the margin privately and leave the risk on the public's books.
Government
The Triple Lock - Part 1 - The Ratchet
What the triple lock actually is, what it isn’t, and why both sides of the debate keep arguing about the wrong thing
Government
The Triple Lock - Part 2 - The Invisible Subsidy
What public-sector pensions are really worth — and why almost nobody counts
Engineering
The Card Trick
How actuarial software vendors sell a graphics-card number they can't deliver on the models that actually matter
Insurance
BPA
How the argument progresses "The asset behind the counterparty" — thirteen steps in three movements: the value machine onshore, the risk crossing offshore, and the rating asked to catch it. Click any step to expand the reasoning behind it. Expand all Collapse all Movement I — the value machine, onshore
Insurance
The asset behind the counterparty
CP8/26 tightens the capital cedants hold against their funded reinsurance counterparties. But counterparty strength, for a funded re vehicle, is largely a function of the asset pool behind it — and that is the risk the regime still reaches only indirectly.
Insurance
The Overruled Objection
How the Treasury was told, in writing, that its pension reforms would raise the probability of insurer failure by a fifth — and proceeded anyway.