Description: The purpose of this paper is to describe the methods upon which the computations of policy reserves and related annual statement terms for the family policy issued by the company with which the author is connected are based. From Transactions of Society of Actuaries 1958, Vol. 10, No. 26.

Description: The Society of Actuaries Financial Reporting Section is pleased to make available a new report examining the International Standards Board’s (IASB) Re-Exposure draft, Insurance Contracts, issued in June 2013. Performed by Rodrigo Careaga, Tara Hansen, Asad Khalid, and Bruce Rosner of Ernst & Young LLP, this study illustrates differences in earnings emergence for new business projections between current US GAAP and the proposed standard for a sample of 12 products. Additionally, it shows the impact on earnings emergence of various sensitivity tests.

Description: The multi-risk scenario generator is an output of the Smaller Insurance Company Section’s sponsored Principle- Based Reserves Simplified Methods study performed by Mark Birdsall, Steve Strommen, and Brian Hartman. The scenario generator can be used for all material assumptions in an actuary’s cash flow projection software.

Description: This paper considers the question of whether or not the growth in the size of financial statements witnessed over the last several years has yielded an increase in the quality of disclosure around issues of financial risk and to what extent this disclosure is satisfying the perceived needs of readers of the financial statements, as represented by the investment analyst community. The question is addressed by presenting the results of research consisting of 1 the review and analysis of the disclosures addressing issues of financial risk contained within financial statements issued from 1999 to 2004 by 25 major insurance companies operating in the US and 2 the interviewing of 5 insurance industry analysts to understand their perceptions of what is good and bad about financial disclosure practices of life insurance companies.

Description: Research paper presenting the potential role of Dynamic Solvency Testing, DST, in preventing the insolvency of insurance companies. This study examines major causes of failure for a small group of companies and evaluates whether and how DST would have helped.

Description: This paper describes a streamlined procedure for allocating investment income which permits the application of a single current investment-year interest rate, together with an averaged rollover rate, to an adjusted asset base to give essentially the same results as the traditional investment-year method. It also includes a discussion of the paper. From Transactions of Society of Actuaries 1976, Vol. 28.

Description: This paper presents multiple book reviews: Reports from Staff of U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Ways and Means and U.S. Senate Committee on Finance, Reports in Connection with Social Security Legislation 1975-77, 'Statement on Cost Comparisons of Individual Life Insurance Policies', by Canadian Institute of Actuaries, 'Investment Activities of Life Insurance Companies' from Huebner Foundation Lectures, 'The Life Insurance Industry's Marketing Dilemma' by Johns, 'The Future of Social Security' by Munnell, 'Social Security - Today and Tomorrow' by Ball, 'Mortality Table Construction' by Batten, 'Mortality Table Construction' by Batten, 'The Crisis in Social Security - Problems and Prospects' by Boskin, 'A History of Interest Rates' by Homer, 'Indexation of Pensions and Other Benefits' by Robert Myers, 'Life Insurance Accounting' by Strain, '1978 Annual Report of the Board of Trustees of the Federal Hospital Insurance Trust Fund...' by US Congress. Brief summaries of additional readings are also included.

Description: This section presents book reviews and summarizes recent publications on subjects that include U.K. social insurance, financing of hospital care, state examinations of life companies, approximate valuation of life and health insurance, mortality forecasting, and valuing estate tax.

Description: This paper represents an attempt to formulate a cohesive and consistent approach to the analysis of claim liabilities. Probabilistic tools from risk and queuing theory have been incorporated into a stochastic model that quantifies the variability inherent in such liabilities and at the same time reproduces intuitive results that may be arrived at from a deterministic standpoint.

Description: The SOA Research Institute’s Committee on Finance Research is pleased to make available a paper that specifies general considerations to guide the development of a methodology to attribute spread to different investment risks related to AG53.