Reboot goes on sale online, gets featured at CIO, the Standard, Network World or the Ides of March
What a week it has been.
Last night was the first night in 7 days that I slept for 7 hours. My average naptime for the week was an astonishing 4 hours, excluding the time I spent power napping waiting for the red traffic light to change to green, on hold waiting for customers to pick up their phone and tell me when they will finally clear my invoice and catching a few winks in between at work when no one was looking.
But it was a great week with a number of surprises and some very rewarding firsts.
Google checkout made my entire week on Monday when we integrated with the Google Merchant account and put Understanding Commodities Risk and Reboot for sale with less than two hours of work. A ten year goal-in-frozen-storage that got met via a chance encounter with Badar Khushnood at Google.
Two days later we sold our first electronic copy of Understanding Commodities Risk. Off went a mail shot to everyone who made this amazing event possible.
With Zafar Khan at Sofizar holding our hands, we updated the landing page for Reboot about 3 times a day, every day for the last 4 days.
And this morning when I came in and started digging for content for the Reboot page, what did I find?
I found that The News and CIO Pakistan have both featured the book, this month in their book review section. But even more importantly the CIO content got picked up and featured in the one and only Industry Standard as well as Network world.
I am not sure how many of you remember the Standard. In 1997, 1998 and 1999, there was only Standard when it came to the Industry. You bought, read it, salivated over it and wished that one of these days, they would feature a piece that you would write about your book. On the other hand, if you really wanted to date yourself and prove that you were there when the world went up and down driven by network traffic, page views, lofty valuations, mood swings and hangovers at NASDAQ, all you had to do was to drop the name of the Standard.
So this Saturday afternoon, still recovering from my sleep deficit of the week that still has two more days to go, I looked at my byline on the Standard and wondered why I took so long to write a piece for Rabia Garib when she had been on my case for ages to put a few lines down for her.
Thank you Rabia! You are a gift from God and I am an idiot for all the times I said no to CIO Pakistan.
March 13, 2010
Tags: Book, CIO, Entrepreneurhsip training, entrepreneurs, entrepreneurship, Network World, Pakistan, Reboot, Startup, The Standard Posted in: Blue Screen, Columbia Business School, Desi Startup, Education, Failure, Pressing words, Startup, Startup Insiders, entrepreneurs, new ventures, small business
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What is happening with the Pakistani Rupee
Two weeks ago at a client presentation when someone asked an Analyst about his Rupee outlook he mentioned 90 by the end of 30th June and possibly 92-93 by the end of the year. Much as I hated it, there wasn’t any ammunition I could throw at him. At the rate the rupee slid from 82 to 86 in the last few months, if you were a pro-Rupee analyst you were outdated, outvoted, out-moded and most likely out of a job.
Then on 4th March 2010 something changed. This morning when I asked my friendly treasury guy about the Interbank rate for converting dollars to Rupee, I was told the most likely expected open on Monday morning for selling dollars is likely to be 83.90 or 83.95 and the Rupee many actually strengthen further all the way to 83.75 if the trend holds.
I am not sure what is driving this appreciation. The only thing that possibly adds up is that we expect to receive a larger than expected share of the outstanding Coalition Support Fund (CSF) payments within the next few weeks or months, or we have struck oil in our most recent offshore oil well for which results should come out in late March. On the striking oil bit, please note that all we need is one or two strikes of 40,000 barrels per day and we are done. That is all the oil we need to wipe out about 5 billion dollars worth of oil imports from our balance of trade. Will we see Rupee breaking 82 (possibly even 80) by the end of April?
March 13, 2010
Posted in: Alchemy stuff
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My love affair with Google, Google check out, Part I
It was the beginning of the year that would mark the turn of the century. I was a second year MBA student at Columbia, sharing a conference room with a first year who had just moved to New York from the valley. We shared a seat each at the Integrity Board Club and I don’t even remember what I was doing on Alta Vista, when he spoke up. “You should try Google”, “Here let me show you.”
And that was that, 10 years ago. Then Faiz Mian (ala Fast) sent me an invite for Gmail, with its gigabit storage and the option to lock in jawwad@gmail.com and there was no turning back. As it is, I was earning my living through researching exotic financial concepts and topics through Google and running training workshops on them across Pakistan and the Middle East on them. In more ways than one Google was a mentor; a partner and reliable resource that I could count on to dig the dirt out on most things financials.
But today something happened that left that first name gigabit storage Gmail invite far behind.
http://www.alchemya.com/publications.html
You have to go see to understand why I am so happy and bubbly today. I have been trying to do what we did today at the above link for the last 10 years. The ability to sell legit copy righted locally produced digital media from a country that is not the US of A without giving up an arm or a leg or killing someone across the table on the other side.
On and off I would get started and then get bogged down in details, logistics and absurdities. Just before Avicena, venture number one shut down, I made a last ditch effort to get started with Paypal to see if we could salvage something from the wreckage of our Californian adventure.  But we went under faster than Paypal could respond.  And as I found out with many other Paypal users, the minute you moved back home to Pakistan, Paypal disowned you with a vengeance. Your pedigree, your credit history, your Ivy League MBA, your million dollar business plan, everything was over ruled by an IP address originating from Pakistan. I had to scratch plan number one.
About four year ago, right about this time, when the Blue Screen of Death first came out, we tried to move the book as an electronic copy.  It was an enormous effort that started with Amazon and ended at Lightening Speed. The book sold all of 14 copies for a net receipt of about 220 dollars that Lightening Speed still owes to us.  To their credit they tried to pay it a number of times but because of my non-US presence and their non-Pakistani support, the money is still sitting somewhere in their suspense account. A few months later Amazon kicked LS out as a vendor and the book went off Amazon’s inventory.  Scratch plan number two.
Last year in spring, I applied for a merchant account with a local bank in Pakistan so that I could fulfill all those credit card orders that were going to bang down my door as soon as we started selling Pakistan Risk Review online. The local bank took a year to approve the application and then told us we couldn’t process the card without the card being physically present.  So much so for overseas online transactions…Scratch plan number three.
A few months ago, somehow Badar Khushnood and I were booked to speak at the same event. We missed each other but exchanged notes on meeting the next time he was in town. Then I ran into a little hitch with Adsense on my personal Learning Corporate Finance and Oilinsights blogs and howled and in came Badar to the rescue. Yesterday Jehan and Yusuf invited Badar, me and as yet an unnamed CEO, soon to be acquired, by an un-named but exciting international suitor for lunch. Badar made a subtle pitch for Google Check out after hearing about my troubled past with online payment platforms and my search for a solution that would help sell Desi content online.
From the point that we spoke yesterday at our lunch meeting, it took me all of 45 minutes to figure Google Checkout out (I am not that smart, it really is that simple). It took another 30 minutes to setup the directory structure to support electronic downloads, about an hour to remember and document all the combinations and their passwords and another 15 minutes to generate and post the code to the buy now page on the Alchemy domain.
With a total investment of 120 minutes, I now have a Google checkout store that allows me to sell my content online. Obviously there are a number of major caveats. You need to have some necessary logistics sorted out (like figuring out how to get an acceptable bank account) before you could really try this at home. But just the fact that after stressing out for the last two weeks trying to figure out on collection and payment issues and asking everyone to help me setup a Paypal account, a gentle nudge from Badar Khushnood was all that it took to fix a 10 year old itch.
Thank you Badar and Thank you Google. Sign me up for your fan page.
March 9, 2010
Tags: Google, Google Checkout, Online Payment options in Pakistan Posted in: Alchemy stuff, Columbia Business School, Desi Back to Desh, Desi Startup, entrepreneurs
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New Course on Risk Management within the Oil, Gas and Petrochemical Industry
Over at the Learning Corporate Finance Blog, I posted a new free online course on risk management within the Oil, Gas and Petrochemical.
A short six session introduction to a risk management framework for the Oil, Gas and Petrochemical industry focused on managing crude oil price volatility for Oil refiners, Polymer and PVC manufacturers and Power Plant operators with partial fixed price tariffs and no government subsidies. While the course builds up from basic discussion on policy, data and models, it also introduces the concept of margin shortfall analysis as a tool for tracking, managing and hedging volatility in crude oil prices.
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Master Class: A Risk framework for Crude Oil and Petrochemical industry: Short Course: Session I
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Master Class: A Risk framework for Crude Oil and Petrochemical industry: Risk Policy: Session II
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If you like this course you may also like
Scheduled for 18th March 2010 at the Dusit Thani in Dubai.
March 9, 2010
Tags: Framework, Oil, Petrochemical, Risk Management Posted in: Alchemy stuff, I can't hack it, Risk, Risk Training
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On Vista, Chrome rocks – notes of a defector
It has been exactly twenty four hours since I gave up on Internet Explorer and Safari and moved to Chrome and all I can say is that I regret every minute I spent on the last two browsers. If I had switched to Chrome a few months ago, so much heartache would have simply vanished out of my life. It is light, fast and unbelievably responsive. Thank you Badar for giving me that nudge that finally made me commit to Chrome.
March 7, 2010
Tags: Browser Wars, Chrome, Google, I hate Internet Explorer Posted in: Alchemy stuff
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Defecting to Google Chrome
Took Moti’s advise today and finally defected to Google Chrome. I recently became a fan of Google after Badar Khushnood intervened to help me sort out a misunderstanding. And then when I finally got sick of both IE and what’s his name Safari crashing on Vista every 5 minutes, I finally downloaded chrome today.
And when I finally turned it on, it took me thirty seconds to decide that this was the browser I had been waiting for all of my life. I am now an official chrome user.
March 6, 2010
Tags: Browser Wars, Chrome, Google, I hate IE Posted in: Alchemy stuff
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Clueless on a Wednesday evening…
So you start a database extract on a table with 12 million rows. Your desktop has been cranking it away for the last 12 hours. You are done with 10 GB of data and you step out of the room for an hour. There is still another 10 hours of processing left and about 6 millions rows to go. You think, a quick break won’t really hurt. What’s the worst that can happen?
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March 3, 2010
Posted in: Alchemy stuff
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Alchemy signs Tameer Bank as a risk advisory customer
The good news that we have been waiting for… Earlier in February 2010, Alchemy signed up Tameer Bank as a customer. After the InvestBank risk advisory engagement and the Consultnomics FZE LLC account in UAE, the Tameer Bank account is the third major account we have closed in the first two months of the New Year.
TAMEER is a Microfinance bank managed by a group of highly experienced bankers committed to go where no (commercial) bank has gone before. It is a private commercial Microfinance bank licensed by the State Bank of Pakistan under the Microfinance Ordnance 2001. TAMEER distinguishes itself from other Microfinance Banks by being one of the first nation-wide, private sector, non-NGO transformed, commercially sustainable micro-finance institutions in Pakistan. Telenor recently acquired a 51% stake in the bank and EZ Paisa, the joint Telenor, Tameer initiative has been making news within the microfinance and micro payment community throughout the world.
February 27, 2010
Posted in: Alchemy stuff
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Learning Corporate Finance – course guide
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Here is the structure of the full course. This should help with Navigation
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The first course in Corporate Finance – Session Zero
Session II-A: Corporate Finance: The Balance Sheet, Assets, Depreciation
Session II-B: Corporate Finance: Balance Sheet: Liabilities & Working Capital
Session II – C: Corporate Finance: Equity and the Income Statement
Session III – A: Corporate Finance: Risk & Return
Session III – B: Corporate Finance: The many faces of Return: ROE, ROIC and Payback
Session IV – A: Corporate Finance: Discount rate and time value of money
Session IV – B: Corporate Finance: Present Value in Action
Session IV – C: Corporate Finance: Calculating Internal Rate of Return or IRR
Session V – A: Corporate Finance: Opportunity Cost and Cost of Capital
Session V – B: Corporate Finance: Beta, Calculating WACC or Weighted Average Cost of Capital
Corporate Finance: Case Study: Electronic Arts (EA): Session IV
February 27, 2010
Posted in: Alchemy stuff
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Learning Corporate Finance or memory lane meets online education meets content…
It was instruction at a level that I had never been exposed to. I had come across some truly great teachers in my prior life but this whole relationship driven, hands on learning approach was the new new thing. The professor was not a professor, the course was not a course. It felt like being let loose in my favourite warehouse at Amazon.com, there was so much on offer and so little time. And I thought to myself, what a wonderful world…
Three months later, the class project that later became Avicena was born. A year later the class project became reality. But then greed, ignorance and arrogance in equal measure conspired with the downturn and something truly innovative that Don Sexton had inspired on a late evening in early spring, withered away and died. And broke the hearts of the six individuals who were both involved and committed in Ken Morse terms. The experience left memories that were strong enough to sneak out as a 200 page e-book that refused to die and was finally released in print late last year.
On the 11th anniversary of the month that saw the concepts.com paper come into being, I went through my backups looking for the content we all wrote for Avicena. It was written to help others get over the pain of learning corporate finance and share some of the wonders of learning I had been blessed with at Columbia Business School. With the help of Fawzia and Talha Izhar we were able to recover portions of it.
On another late evening in early spring I put together the necessary evil parts of word press at the new Learning Corporate Finance blog and published the first complete Corporate Finance course at 4 am on 26th February 2010. The primary course authors were Ashar and Sharleen Zaidi (both at Intel Pakistan) with a little contribution from yours truly.
When Fawzia first recovered the back up and sent me the CSV file, I told her that I would probably end up with tears in my eyes when this decade old material would finally land on my blog. And so I did, just a little. I hope you enjoy this glimpse into the venture that you have heard so much about from me on this blog, through Blue Screen of Death and Reboot. Enjoy.
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February 26, 2010
Tags: Avicena, Corporate Finance, Learning, Online education, startups Posted in: Alchemy stuff
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Understanding Commodities Risk – in print March 2010
Understanding Commodities Risk – out in print early March 2010

The principles are simple. Document the supply and demand of a resource, the psychology of its market and participant behaviour and you should have a handle on how prices move. Identify any leading indicators and your price prediction model is complete.
Interesting enough while commodities markets are older than time, at the user level price movement in this group is not as well understood as stocks and bonds. While each commodity is unique and to some extent interlinked with broader trends in oil, gold and currencies, analyst coverage is not as common or as deep as we would want. Till about two years ago this was acceptable since markets would spike and prices would shoot on account of supply and demand pressures and when an aggressive player was trapped in a short squeeze in a given market at a time. But all of this changed with the arrival of 2008, with 147 dollar oil, 1200 dollar gold, correlations and volatilities that could downshift before you could even spell the word sell.
In this edition of commodity risk, we have tried to answer five specific questions
- What are the relevant and credible drivers behind price movement of oil?
- What is the relationship between Australian dollar and gold?
- How have correlations and volatilities changed between 2008 and 2009?
- What is the real rate of interest in the Indo-Pakistan subcontinent? How closely are these two markets linked?
- How are price movements in oil related to other commodity groups? How does this analysis extent to Palm oil?
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We start with a look at Oil, Gold, Natural Gas, Interest Rates and the Australian dollar. We look at the dynamics and the drivers behind these five groups and the one currency that is looked at as a leading indicator both for price movements and correlation. To this mix we add edible oil (Palm oil), inflation and interest rates in the region as well as examine the changing trend in correlations. Interest rates, real rates and inflation allowed us to examine inflation hedge effectiveness as well as document inflation adjusted returns.
February 23, 2010
Tags: Commodities Risk, Dollar, Euro, Gold, Oil, Prices Posted in: Alchemy stuff
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Shaukat Tarin Quits
Shaukat Tarin, the Banker behind Union Bank and its successful sale to Standard Chartered Bank for about 500 million dollars in 2006, quit this morning as Pakistan’s Finance Minister. Post Union Bank, Shaukat along with a consortium of multination investors acquired Saudi Pak Commercial Bank from SAPICO for a second Union run. The acquired bank was re-branded as Silk Bank and after Shaukat’s elevation as Finance Minister went off track from its planned growth story. With Shaukat back at the helm, Silk Bank’s fortunes should certainly revive.
Unfortunately what is great news for Silk Bank is possibly not the best of news for Pakistan. Shaukat’s recent stint at the top slot at Ministry of Finance helped provide continuity in the finance policy framework, closed and then extended the SBA facility with IMF, removed fuel and food subsidies, partially addressed the circular debt issue, stabilized the rupee and added degrees of confidence compared to the disastrous stint of Senator Ishaq Dar in that role.
We will miss you Mr. Tarin.
February 23, 2010
Tags: Finance, Ministry of Finance, Pakistan, Shaukat, Tarin Posted in: Alchemy stuff
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Challenges of Life Insurance Marketing
I learnt how to type first on a Remingten typewriter typing away life insurance policy proposals and articles Aba wrote for the Insurance Journal. From issue dealing with trust to issues dealing with Fiqah and Islamic thought on life insurance, my early education on this subject was primarily on account of the work I did for my father. A few years later the Remington was replaced by a daisy wheel electric type writer and the life insurance proposals were replaced by union negotiations but my education through Aba’s articles and his work continued.
Two decades later I am now a qualified actuary who has worked in the appointed actuary role with three life insurance companies, two conventional, one Takaful and I have personally faced some of the challenges associated with that role that my father foresaw as early as in 1988. If it wasn’t for the work I did on a light blue typewriter as a fourteen year old, I possibly would never have picked up an interest in this field and travelled the eleven year path to become an actuary. As long as you are associated with the insurance industry either as a sales oriented professional, as a manager or as a regulator, the book has something to offer to you.
When Reboot finally came out in print, Aba started putting together all the work he had done over the last 45 years in the field of life insurance on his laptop and between Sama, Nadeem, Sana, Adnan, Fawzia and myself we had a cover, a profile photo and a blog up and running for the book. The book is expected to come out in print before the summer inshahallah and the blog has a complete sample chapter posted on it.
Enjoy…

February 23, 2010
Tags: Life Insurance Marketing in Pakistan Posted in: Alchemy stuff
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Insurance in Islamic thought: Takaful, Family Takaful, Re-Takatful – Part ii
(An extract from a series of articles on Insurance in Islamic thought by Rizwan Ahmed Farid, from his upcoming book on Challenges of Life Insurance Marketing)
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El-Gamal, Mahmoud A., of Rice University writes:
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“Interestingly, while the Islamic insurance industry has adopted a name suggestive of a mutual cooperative system, takaful companies have generally been structured as for profit shareholder-owned companies, or subdivisions thereof. In other words, the corporate form of those takaful companies is identical to that of the commercial insurance companies whose contracts the Ulama forbade. Takaful companies invoke non commutativity by stipulating that the shareholders pay policyholder claims as a form of voluntary contribution (tabarru`), where the operator is usually set up in the form of silent partnership (mudaraba), with the exception of few recent attempts at using agency (wakala) – while still falling short of mutual forms. In both structures, there are unresolved fiqhi issues about bindingness of promises in such voluntary tabarru`. It would appear, thus, that in the Islamic insurance (risk intermediation) industry as well as in the Islamic banking (credit intermediation) industry, mutuality can align rhetoric with reality and resolve simultaneously a number of corporate governance, religious, and financial problems.”
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The element of ribÄ â€“ the receiving of interest – as well as the forbidden ventures, such as gambling, dealing in alcohol, and night club activities, ambiguity or deception, etc. leaves many financial products, including conventional insurance, in opposition to Shari’ah. Thus one billion eight hundred and twenty-three million in 2009, which number is increasing at the rate of 1.84% annually, have but few options when shopping for products that conform to their faith.
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After years of efforts and representation, the provision of Policy Holders Directors in the Insurance Act, 1938, was increased from one fourth to one third through the Insurance Amendment Ordinance in 1970. Rule. 48(1) of the Insurance Act, 1938, which was repealed on 19th August 2000 through the promulgation of the Insurance Ordinance, 2000, stated that:
“Where the insurer is a company incorporated under the Companies Act, 1913, and carries on the business of life insurance, not less than one third of the directors of the company shall not withstanding anything to the contrary in the Articles of Association of the company be elected in the prescribed manner by the holders of policies of life insurance issued by the company.”
However, as I have written earlier that local and foreign powerful lobbies and vested interest groups who were behind the scene, influenced the consultants to delete and totally drop the provision of Mutual insurance companies and the important provision of the Policyholder Directors on the Board of the company, to watch the interests of the life insurance policyholders from the new legislation, Insurance Ordinance, 2000.
It is high time that the government and the parliamentarians make an immediate amendment in the Insurance Ordinance 2000, and insert a specific provision for ‘mutual insurance company’ operations as well as representation of not less than two-third Policyholders’ Directors on the Board of a commercial Family Takaful Operator to watch and safeguard the interests of the policyholders.
Takaful Models are based on mutual cooperation, responsibility, assurance, protection and assistance among groups of participants. Its principles are similar to those that underpin mainstream mutual insurance contracts. Besides, a Takaful product needs to strictly follow the norms of Shari’ah compatible principles. The Board of Islamic Shari’ah Scholars’ role has been specifically assigned to vet business decisions.
Each Takaful operator under Ruletion 34 (1) of the Takaful Rules 2005 is required to appoint a Shari’ah Board (SB) of not less than three members which shall be responsible for the approval of products, documentation as well as approval of all operational practices and investment of funds. The Takaful operator shall appoint only high caliber scholars who are specialized jurists in fiqh almu’amalat (Islamic commercial jurisprudence) to such Boards. In addition, they shall have knowledge of modern financial dealings and transactions.
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So far, two Family Takaful Operators (life insurance companies) Pak-Qatar Family Takaful Limited, and Dawood Family Takaful Limited, launched their Family Takaful products, respectively in 2007 and 2009. Pak-Kuwait Takaful Company Limited, Pak Qatar General Takaful, and Takaful Pakistan Limited are also registered for causality insurance business.
Under the conventional structure of insurance the insured shifts the risk to the insurer, but under takaful mode by incorporating risk bearing condition the insured is also the insurer. The golden principle of ‘bear ye one another’s burdens’ applies as on the occurrence of a loss the members share the risk themselves. The participants’ (voluntary) contributions towards the pool to mitigate losses expunge the element of gharar from the contract. Conditions of risk-bearing, indemnity in kind and shari’ah compliance investments change the character of insurance in vogue and free it from the odium of contractual riba, qimar and, to some extent, gharar.
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Conventional insurance falls down because it involves the taking of a financial risk that the policyholder will make a loss if a claim does not occur. This uncertainty of happening of the insured event, which many Shari’ah scholars pronounce constitutes a qimar i.e. gambling. Unlike conventional insurance, where risk is transferred from the policyholder to the insurance company, takaful mode requires all participants to share risk among them. They pay contributions for the quantum of risk as that with conventional insurance practice, and are calculated on the basis of the published morbidity and mortality tables. These tables are being developed regularly and validated for the last two hundred and thirty years to ascertain the probable number of years any man or woman of a given age and of ordinary health will live. A mortality table expresses on the basis of the group studied the probability that, of a number of persons of equal expectations of life who are living at the beginning of any year, a certain number of deaths will occur within that year.
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These contributions are then pooled in ‘Participants Takaful Fund’ which is invested strictly in Shari’ah approved ventures, under Ruletion 19 of the Takaful Rules 2005. The Investment of participants’ contributions within the Participants Takaful Fund (PTF) as well as in the Participants Investment Fund (PIF) shall be managed under a Wakala contract, a Mudarabah contract or a combination contract as determined to be sound and workable by the Shari’ah Board of the Takaful operator. The Takaful operator shall set the fee structure and the profit sharing ratio on the investment management based on the advice of the Shari’ah Board and the Appointed Actuary, if any.
February 21, 2010
Tags: Business Insurance, Insurance, Insurance Ordinance, Takaful Posted in: Alchemy stuff
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The Treasury Risk workshop
Here what we covered on Saturday at the Treasury Risk crash course at the Karachi Marriot (thank you Agnes for the notes). The one day Treasury Risk workshop in Dubai is now locked in on the 18th of March 2010 at the Dusit Thani in Dubai. You can download the nomination form here for the workshop.
First, to view trends from a much broader perspective, in general the practical as opposed to the quant/ data way to view distributions (effectiveness, behaviour, relationships). This is be one with the generator function (Nassim Taleb and Fooled by Randomness) or what we call the Nirvana effect.
Second, what is really happening when model price match market prices, especially in illiquid markets such as the one year FX swap space here in Karachi, Pakistan.
Third the difference between economic capital, regulatory capital and loss capital.
Fourth, linking Value at Risk limits to Stop loss limits and linking stop loss limits to book size and risk appetite.
Fourth, the second definition of Convexity, the fact that asset prices tend to rise by more and fall by less when interest rates change and the criteria for asset liability management and hence asset selection based on convexity (convexity of assets > convexity of liabilities).
Fifth, the allocation of portfolio assets by ALM criteria (duration and convexity)
Sixth, normally distributed actual returns are a reflection that a risk manager has not added value (similar to a coin toss) and that skewness is something to be viewed favorably, provided that it is skewed in the direction that meets existing risk return philosophy.
February 21, 2010
Tags: Training, Treasury Risk, Workshop Posted in: Alchemy stuff
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