Managing Risk in Reinsurance

From City Fires to Global Warming

Edited by Neils Haueter and Geoffrey Jones

First book to give a detailed account of the history of reinsurance.
Interdisciplinary in appeal; Insurance, reinsurance, risk, financial, economic, actuarial, and social history
Contributions from leading scholars and experts

Managing Risk in Reinsurance

From City Fires to Global Warming

Edited by Neils Haueter and Geoffrey Jones

Description

The business of reinsurance developed at the fringe of financial services and, for most of its existence, went largely unnoticed outside the expert community. More recently, both public and professional sensitivity towards managing risks has increased and reinsurers have emerged as authorities on global threats such as climate change and natural catastrophes.

This is the first book to provide a comprehensive historical description of this industry. It traces the global development of reinsurance from the early 19th century until today. As such it gives a detailed account of how the nature of risk itself changed over the last 200 years. It highlights all aspects relevant in shaping the industry from the development of risk, risk engineering and risk management, actuarial science, the financial and monetary environment, market conditions, impacts of politics, the effects of regulatory changes, to large risks and natural catastrophes.

A comprehensive introduction by the editors highlights the different challenges and approaches to managing risk from a reinsurance perspective such as mathematical, financial, legal, and contractual developments, as well as the changing business models adopted. All of these are dealt with in further detail by ten contributing authors.

Managing Risk in Reinsurance

From City Fires to Global Warming

Edited by Neils Haueter and Geoffrey Jones

1. ntroduction: Risk and Reinsurance, Niels Viggo Haueter and Geoffrey Jones
2. The Cultural Context of Insurance in the West, Geoffrey Clark
3. The Evolution of the Industry Structure, Robin Pearson
4. The Monetary and Financial Environment, 1860-2013, Forrest Capie
5. Calculating the Unpredictable: History of Actuarial Theories and Practices in Reinsurance, Hans Buhlmann and Martin Lengwiler
6. The Rise and Decline of Treaty Reinsurance: Changing roles of Reinsurers as Financial Service Providers, Alexandros-Andreas Kyrtsis
7. From Gentlemen's Agreement to Judicial Instrument: The History of Contract Practice and Conflict Resolution in Reinsurance, Tilmann Roder
8. Reinsurance Law as an Autonomous Regulation Regime? Resistance to Codification and Avoidance of the Courts in the Twentieth Century, Milos Vec
9. What is an Insurable Risk? Swiss Re and Atomic Reactor Insurance, Lorraine Daston
10. Natural Catastrophes and their Effects on Reinsurance, Welf Werner
11. Continuity and Change in Reinsurance 1990-2016, Roman Lechner, Lawrence Kenny, and Niels Viggo Haueter

Managing Risk in Reinsurance

From City Fires to Global Warming

Edited by Neils Haueter and Geoffrey Jones

Author Information

Geoffrey Jones, Isidor Straus Professor of Business History, Harvard Business School, Neils Haueter, Head of Swiss Re's Corporate History unit, Swiss Reinsurance Company.

Geoffrey Jones is the Isidor Straus Professor of Business History at the Harvard Business School. He has written extensively on the history of globalization. His recent books include Multinationals and Global Capitalism (OUP 2005) and Beauty Imagined: A History of the Global Beauty Industry (OUP, 2010). He is co-editor of the journal Business History Review, and a Fellow of the Academy of International Business and the Royal Historical Society.

Niels Viggo Haueter is Head of Swiss Re's Corporate History unit. He serves as Deputy Chairman of the Academic Council of the European Association for Banking and Financial History in Frankfurt and is a guest lecturer at Hitotsubashi University, Tokyo. Together with Peter Borscheid he edited World Insurance: The Evolution of a Global Risk Network published by Oxford University Press in 2012.

Contributors:

Hans Bühlmann, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology
Forrest Capie, Cass Business School, City University of London
Geoffrey Clark, Potsdam State University of New York
Lorraine Daston, Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin
Niels Viggo Haueter, Swiss Reinsurance Company Ltd
Geoffrey Jones, Harvard Business School
Lawrence Kenny
Alexandros-Andreas Kyrtsis, University of Athens
Roman Lechner,
Martin Lengwiler, University of Basel
Robin Pearson, University of Hull
Tilmann Röder, Max Planck Foundation for International Peace and the Rule of Law, Heidelberg
Milos Vec, University of Vienna
Welf Werner, Jacobs University, Bremen