Description: This discussion at the SOA 1997 Palm Desert Spring Meeting looks at issues related to second-hand smoke including the negative health effects and underwriting implications.

Description: This 1978 discussion session focuses on the impact on pension plan design due to: 1. The 1977 Amendments to the Social Security Act, 2. The Administration's proposal in regard to integration of private pension plan benefits with Social Security benefits, 3. The requirement to eliminate compulsory retirement prior to age 70, and 4. The U.S. Supreme Court decision in City of Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, et al. v. Manhart, et al. which held that an employer violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 when it requires women to contribute more than men to a pension fund in order to receive the same level of benefits.

Description: The author summarizes her experience participating as an expert as part of a forum that was launched to give the public a neutral avenue through which to express views on the U.S. Social Security program and possible reforms. This particular forum focused on women's issues with respect to Social Security.

Description: This is a summary of topics discussed at the 1996 Bowles Symposium: “The Old Age Crisis: Actuarial Opportunities,” September 26-27, 1996, at Georgia State University, Atlanta.

Description: This paper endeavors to obtain the explicit formulas of the probability of ruin in a Markov-modulated model where claim intensities, claim sizes and premiums vary according to a Markovian environment.

Description: The article explores several major historical conflicts in the region and identifies the impact these conflicts had on various asset classes, for both Canada and the U.S., and provides some strategies for risk management and for responding to opportunities.

Description: This article discusses the current status, including differing views, on the treatment of risk transfer in reinsurance agreements under the principle-based reserves PBR approach.

Description: This paper aims to help financial and insurance practitioners better recognize, assess, and respond to large scale, large impact, rare events (LSLIRE’s) which are occurrences currently often wrongly labeled as being unpredictable black swans. A black swan, as Nassim Taleb defines it in his popular book, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, Random House & Penguin (2007-2010 2nd. Ed.) is 1) an outlier event, which 2) carries extreme impact, and 3) “makes us concoct explanations for its occurrence after the fact.” Elsewhere, Taleb says it is unpredictable, which is why people concoct explanations. Other people use the term in many and various ways, to enfold events missed by most people because they are rare, missed by computer models and/or experts, and to include events they simply seem personally to have misunderstood. The paper also discusses building better ways to assess such events’ background characteristics, emergence dynamics, logics, and other foreseeable attributes. A secondary focus is educating practitioners to better respond - whether to limit damage or to take advantage of - the opportunities that arise from what others are likely to miss or misjudge during and after the emergence of LSLIRE (AKA black swan) events.

Description: Article from Risk Management Newsletter, November 2005, Issue 6 on the elicitation and elucidation of risk preferences. The report’s intent is to raise awareness of the benefits of formally eliciting risk preferences for a company. This effort can lead to a mutually agreed upon framework for evaluating potential trategies. Introductions to techniques and references are provided to aid interested readers in pursuing the subject further.

Description: This article discusses the potential characteristics of health care reform and the associated impact on small insurance companies.