[csaa-forum] MMCCS Public Lecture: ‘The securitization of life and the biovalue of life insurance’: Luis Lobo-Guerrero (Keele University)

[Holly Randell-Moon]

*MMCCS Public Lecture:*

*‘The securitization of life and the biovalue of life insurance’*

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*Date:* Monday 14 November

*Time:* 5:00pm-6:00pm

*Venue:* Macquarie University, Y3A.T1

*Speaker:* Dr Luis Lobo-Guerrero, Keele University



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*About the Topic:*

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The last decade has witnessed a period of extraordinary dynamism in the
securitization of ‘life’. In 2002 Swiss Re launched the world’s first
‘mortality bond’, an instrument through which the ‘excess mortality’
derived from the impact of shocks such as pandemics (e.g. bird flu) was
securitized in the capital markets. In 2010 Swiss Re innovated again in the
realm of ‘insurance-linked-securities’ (ILS) by introducing the first ever
‘longevity trend bond’ an instrument designed to protect pensions and
annuities against ‘excess vitality’; that is, longer lives. Deriving its
value from the ‘lives’ of policyholders and annuitants in developed
markets, mortality and longevity bonds promise to take stock of medical
advances and evolving knowledge on infectious diseases to instil resilience
into a global bio-political economy. They are modelled through a novel
technique of ‘stochastic model of peril process’ through which modellers
claim to have found the way to create an ‘event tree of all possible
pandemics’. The claim, which is curiously–if not innocently– underwritten
by a positive Standard & Poor’s risk rating, offers a space from which to
explore some of the epistemological underpinnings of these modelling
practices. This presentation asks, what is the ‘life’ that is used as the
basis for modelling risk and securitizing capital in the financial markets?
What do these strategies have to say about the ways in which ‘life’ is
valued as capital? And, what is the ‘bond’ that results from securitizing
life with the life in need of security?



*About the Speaker:*

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Luis Lobo-Guerrero is Senior Lecturer at the School of Politics,
International Relations and Philosophy, Keele University, UK where he is
also the director of the Emerging Securities Research Unit. His main
research interests are ‘insurance’, ‘the biopolitics of security’, and
‘epistemologies of risk’. He has published in numerous journals,
including *Security
Dialogue*, *Review of International Studies*, *International Political
Sociology*, and *Theory, Culture & Society*. He is currently completing a
book trilogy devoted to the analysis of the relationship between insurance
and security in the modern period. The first two volumes are *Insuring
Security: Biopolitics, Security and Risk *(Routledge, 2011), and *Insuring
War: Sovereignty, Security and Risk* (Routledge, forthcoming 2012). He is
now writing the third volume on life insurance, security and the theory of
value. He is currently Visiting Research Fellow at the Department of War
Studies, King’s College London, and will be Visiting Professor at the
Institute for Sociology, University of Hamburg in the Spring of 2012.



For more information please contact Holly Randell-Moon (*
holly.randell-moon at mq.edu.au* <holly.randell-moon at m%E2%80%8Bq.edu.au>)

-- 

Dr. Holly Randell-Moon
Department of Media, Music, Communication and Cultural Studies
Faculty of Arts
Macquarie University, NSW 2109
Australia
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