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On-site visits to financial service firms were conducted to review and evaluate their risk management systems. In the insurance sector, this evaluation covered prominent life/health and property-liability insurers, both in the United States and abroad. The information obtained covered both the philosophy and the practice of financial risk management. This article outines the results of this investigation. It reports the state of risk management techniques in the industry. It reports the standard of practice and evaluates how and why it is conducted in the particular way chosen. In addition, critiques are offered where appropriate. We discuss the problems which the industry finds most difficult to address, shortcomings of the current methodology used to analyze risk, and the elements that are missing in the current procedures of risk managment.The past decade has seen a dramatic rise in the number of insolvent insurers. The ostensible causes of these insolvencies were myriad. Some of the insolvencies were precipitated by rapidly rising or declining interest rates. Others resulted from losses on assets such as junk bonds, commercial mortgages, collateralized mortgage obligations, real estate, and derivatives.Mispricing of insurance policies, natural catastrophes, and changes in legal interpretations of liability and the limits of coverage hurt still others. The "churning" of policies by unscrupulous sales agents, insolvencies among the reinsurers backing the policies issued, noncompliance with insurance regulation, and malfeasance on the part of officers and directors of the insurance companies affected some as well. But despite the numerous and disparate apparent causes of these insolvencies, the underlying factor in all of them was the same: inadequate risk management practices. In response to this, insurers almost universally have embarked upon an upgrading of their financial risk

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We wish to thank Linda Bamber, Michael Bamber, and Randal Elder for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper. We also acknowledge the constructive suggestions of an anonymous referee. Studies that investigate the supply-side determinants of audit fees include Palmrose [