2011 Valuation Actuary Symposium, Orlando. This teaching session provided an understanding of pitfalls waiting to trap casual statistical users and how to avoid them.

An engaging and mind-opening, but relatively painless, introduction to complexity science. "Complexity is the science of the 21st century" (per Stephen Hawking)–be a part of it! A major revolution has taken place in mathematics, finance and economics. Many real world applications, such as the stock market, housing prices and portfolio optimization, cannot be adequately addressed by traditional methods. Traditional modeling techniques may be necessary, but not sufficient. This session will introduce the attendee to new methods such as genetic algorithms, predictive modeling, deterministic chaos, fractal geometry, network theory, behavioral economics and other topics in the new paradigm of complexity sciences. You will not come away an expert in any of them; but they will be much more than just fancy phrases to you when you have finished the session.

2012 SOA Health Meeting Session #21. Several complexity science techniques that can be applied to actuarial problems have emerged in recent years. As our healthcare environment becomes increasingly elaborate, these types of models have the potential to assist us in understanding the new landscape. This session will introduce the attendee to new methods such as cellular automata, genetic algorithms, deterministic chaos, fractal geometry, network theory, behavioral economics, serious games, and other topics in the new paradigm of complexity science. Case studies involving healthcare applications will be featured to explain these techniques.

2010 Annual Meeting & Exhibit, New York. This session used some examples, such as hedging, valuing GMXB benefits in VA contracts, and pricing stop loss coverage, to demonstrate flaws in the application of the law of large numbers.

This dissertation by Tia Sawhney will help you understand this issue and start measuring it, or start promoting equitable public policy.

During the past few years there have been important advances in life insurance underwriting from a technological point of view. More and more companies are starting to use automation to enhance the underwriting process or even replace it for some products. At the same time, the use of advanced analytics is making its way into life insurance underwriting. The use of predictive models or algorithmic solutions is commonplace in property and casualty insurance, but it is a relatively new innovation in life insurance. This innovation offers the opportunity to reduce costs, reach new markets and improve the customer experience. This webinar explored some of the options available, discussed the associated opportunities and challenges of implementing this new technology and discussed how to integrate automated underwriting with sales and product development.

Traditional life insurance underwriting and issue processes have been an impediment to profitable sales in the mid-market. Most mid-market companies use rapid issue processes, which include very limited underwriting and may lead carriers to limit the size of the face amounts sold in order to mitigate the additional risk resulting from their underwriting practices. Currently, companies have electronic underwriting tools, which allow them to perform fairly comprehensive risk screening and to issue a policy at the point-of-sale, but there is very little information available on what type of experiences companies are having with these systems. This webcast presents the results of Phases 1 and 2 of the Study of Automated Life Insurance Underwriting sponsored by the following groups: Marketing and Distribution Section Council, Product Development Section Council, Reinsurance Section Council and Committee on Life Insurance Research, with Deloitte Consulting, LLP performing the research. The purpose of the study was to investigate industry interest for automated underwriting systems; examine how they are being used in the industry; and analyze company experiences with their systems. The following areas were explored: the purpose of automated underwriting, i.e. how it fits into each insurer's business goals, any operational efficiencies it produces, its impact upon insurance sales, quality of risk selection and claims experience from automated underwriting, any unexpected challenges and benefits and cultural acceptance of automated underwriting.

The ever-increasing complexity of product design, hedge strategies and financial reporting has placed a growing burden on the actuary to collect, analyze and draw conclusions from experience data. Products with increasingly complex embedded options and volatile markets have made it that much more difficult to set actuarial assumptions. The actuary now carries a greater volume of work and professional responsibility, but faces resource and data limitations in constructing studies of experience. This session will provide insight into the evolving practices for measuring experience data and setting actuarial assumptions. Some of the topics covered in this session will include: Measuring market-driven policyholder behavior Process issues in dealing with large data sets Consistency across actuarial applications Determining appropriate prudent margins Assumption decision-making and governance processes Determining and applying credibility Regulator expectations for principle-based reserves and capital.

Discusses using best judgment about future policyholder behavior in order to determine required amount of capital and reserves. Shows where to find experience studies and discusses the effects of future policyholder behavior on capital needs. Session # 40 PD of the Sept. 2010 Valuation Actuary Symposium in Chicago.

This presentation is a panel discussion, session number 90PD, from the 2011 Annual Meeting of the Society of Actuaries, held October 16-19 in Chicago. The panelists discuss the middle income insurance market for life insurance, its huge potential, and the issues faced in efficiently serving this market. New sales and marketing approaches, and emerging underwriting and issue technologies are discussed