In this first article, Ken McCullum—EVP and Chief Risk Officer at Principal—explores how asset-liability management (ALM) supports long-term financial security.
Asset-liability management (ALM) plays a critical role in the actuarial profession, especially as actuaries help organizations manage risk and ensure long-term financial health.
To explore this topic, we asked Ken McCullum—Executive Vice President and Chief Risk Officer at Principal Financial Group—to share his perspective! With decades of experience in actuarial and risk leadership, Ken brings a valuable lens to ALM’s role in supporting financial stability and long-term value.
This is the first of two articles from Ken. Next week, Ken will examine case studies that demonstrate the importance of ALM, as well as ALM's emerging stressors.
What Makes ALM Important?
As an actuary with over 35 years of experience working on and thinking about risk management for insurance companies, I was honored and inspired to be asked to reflect on the importance of ALM for an insurance company. Fundamentally, there is nothing more essential to the health and durability of an insurance company.
Fundamentally, there is nothing more essential to the health and durability of an insurance company [than ALM].
I have seen ALM tested many times and in a variety of ways during my career and historically. I am confident the future will continue to offer unique, complicated, and critical challenges to test the soundness of insurance company ALM disciplines. I firmly believe actuaries have a vital role to play in making sure ALM engineering is rigorous enough to withstand these unknown future stresses, including those that may be, or at least seem to be, without precedent.
Whatever your interest in this topic might be, I hope to offer a bit of perspective on why I view ALM as a critical foundation to insurance company management. I will add that I view insurance as essential to providing individuals and families with financial security. Therefore, I believe effective ALM is a cornerstone of financial security for society.
Balancing the Needs of Many Stakeholders
Insurance companies have many constituents to satisfy, often their interests diverge and occasionally they conflict. Customers want the best possible benefits, service, and costs. Investors want strong, reliable, and growing returns. Employees want attractive compensation, career development opportunities and job security. Insurance companies operate in a competitive market that perpetually raises the bar on each of the constituent’s expectations.
Effective ALM is a cornerstone of financial security for society.
As such, the pressures on ALM come from many sources. Drivers often include the pressure to generate more investment yield and the pressure to provide more innovative products, particularly ones with stronger guarantees and greater customization and flexibility.
Market evolution, with new investment offerings, new competitor products, and new types of competitors, will continually introduce both risk and reward that will need to be carefully and expediently assessed. Growth itself, while highly desirable, inevitably challenges risk capacity and diversification elements that underlie sound ALM.
Thank you to Ken for his insights—with more to come next week. If you're interested in further developing your understanding of ALM, the SOA’s new CP-351 ALM course is a valuable resource!