Description: Report on the second in a series of studies conducted jointly by LIMRA International and the SOA Long-Term Care Experience Committee. The study examines longterm care insurance LTCI industry persistency experience by reporting on changes in both voluntary lapse and total termination activity for all participating companies during calendar years 2002 through 2004. Overall, the results indicate that LTCI persistency continues to increase. However, recent increases have occurred on the group side of the business more than the individual side.

Description: Report on the first study conducted jointly by LIMRA International and the SOA Long Term Care Experience Committee. The study examines voluntary lapse and total termination activity in LTCI for calendar years 2000 and 2001. Overall, the results indicate that LTCI persistency has continued to improve however, the current improvement seems to be coming from the individual lines of business rather than the group lines.

Description: The article compares China's variable annuities with India's NAV guaranteed ULIPs. Both of them mostly working on CPPI. The comparison is mainly focused on market competition landscape, unit-linked business market share, incentives of introducing the product, and the macro-economic environment in the two countries.

Description: Book Review of How to Cope with the Developing Financial Crisis by Ashby Bladen, McGraw Hill, New York, 1979

Description: This material from the 1981 SOA Fall Meeting is a collection of impromptu questions and comments from an Open Forum session on policy loans. The purpose of this session is to discuss the policy loan rates, equity between borrowers and non-borrowers, and equity among groups of policy-owners having different contractual loan rates. The variable loan rate proposal and direct recognition are also covered. From Record of the Society of Actuaries 1981, Volume 7, No. 4.

Description: Discussion of the issues the PBGC was focusing on at the time including modeling issues, losses incurred and expected and changes in legislation desired by the PBGC to manage losses going forward.

Description: This actually is a copy of an appendix of a research paper sponsored by the SOA Committee on Finance Research. You can read the entire research paper: “Lapse Modeling for the Post-Level Period—a Practical Application of Predictive Modeling” at the SOA site https://www.soa.org/Research/Research-Projects/Finance-Investment/lapse-2015-modeling-post-level/#sthash.W9lERSls.dpbs, but you can read this valuable appendix copied here in this issue to see how to build a PM step-by-step using your data and the R programming language. We thank Richard Xu, Dihui Lai, Minyu Cao, Scott Rushing, and Tim Rozar for their excellent paper and the Society of Actuaries, for the permission to reprint this portion of the paper.

Description: Rising drug—and, to a lesser extent, health care—costs in Canada are creating long-term challenges for not only governments and employers across Canada but for individuals as well, with no easy answers.

Description: The rules governing the tax treatment of distributions from life insurance or annuity contracts are complex. Worse, the relevant IRC section, section 72, seems at times to be the product of a conspiracy in restraint of understanding.

Description: Health Watch, Issue 79, December 2015, Health Watch