再保險과 外換危險 = Reinsurance and Foreign Exchange Risk

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

When professional insurers discuss the economic difficulties that they have to face in their daily work, they will always give pride of place to the erratic fluctuation of exdange rates and the distortions caused by them with regard to technical result and profit and loss accounts.
This type of concern is felt particularly by reinsurers, mainly because they practice geographic dispersal of risks on an international scale, so that they deal in a large number of currencies. Their total net assets expressed in national currency on the basis of assets and liabilities held in various currencies undergo substantial fluctuations owing to foreign exchange rate movements.
For reinsurance companies, as for all firms operating at the international level, the foreign exchange problem has become particularly acute since the adoption by major countries of the Western world of the system of floating rates of exchange. This is, first of all, because it is no longer a temporary problem due to the risk of devaluation or revaluation of an isolated currency, but rather a permanent concern. It is also due to the fact that the direction in which foreign currency rates will at all times reflect the totality of the information available and will fluctuate in a random fashion as a function of the arrival of new information. Although there is always an underlying basic trend in their movements (as reflected by interest rate differentials), the direction of short-term fluctuations is difficult to predict.
Compared with other operators in the international financial market, reinsurers encounter a certain number of specific problems in the management of foreign exchange risk. Essentially, these problems are linked with the random nature of the liabilities acceptd.
The present study has served to review the major problems faced by reinsurers as a result of fluctuating exchange rates. Here is a list of the man conclusions that can be drawn from it.
(a) The peculiar character of the reinsurance trade creates foreign exchange difficulties for the reinsurers which are not experienced (or at least, not to the same extent) by other branches of economic activity. Reinsurers cannot identify their foreign exchange exposure, not only because their liabilites are uncertain, but also because the information provided by the ceding insurers on the changes in these liabilities is generally inadequate.
(b) Notwithstanding all this, most of the procedures for the management of foreign exchange risks used in international finance meet the requirements of the reinsurers; they include hedging in the futures market which can be used to deflect the overall foreign exchange exposure in a desired direction. On the other hand billing in national currency, a procedure which is frequently employed by industrial and commercial firms, is not advisable here since it amount to reinsuring in currency of a third country.
(c) The system of reinsuring in the currency of a third country results in distortion of technical results and in gain or loss in exchange, not only for the ceding insurer but also for the reinsurers or the retrocessionnaire. It is for this reason that all the parties concerned should find it advantageous to conclude reinsurance treaties expressed in the original currency of the direct insurance transactions to which they relate.
(d) Similarly, resort to the system of currency baskets cannot be regarded as a genuine solution of the foreign exclange problems faced by reinsurers. On the contrary since it involves the same drawbacks as the system of reinsurance in the currency of a third country, and since it results, in certain cases, in an unequal treatment of the parties to the reinsurance treaty, the use of this procedure can only make the problem worse.

목차 (Table of Contents)

• Ⅰ. 序 論
• Ⅱ. 再保險者의 外換危險
• 1. 會計的 露出과 經濟的 露出
• 2. 再保險者의의 會計的 危險
• 3. 再保險者의 經濟的 危險
• Ⅲ. 再保險者의 外換危險 補塡第
• 1. 外換危險 管理 싸이클
• 2. 外換危險 補塡第
• 1) 內部的 補塡第
• 2) 外部的 補塡第
• Ⅳ. 外換危險 補塡第의 限界 및 結論