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: The financial sector should provide financial security and allocate capital well. As its preeminent professionals actuaries have particular responsibilities.

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: Discussion of the need to understand the implications of demographic and family diversity for the design of retirement programs. The design of retirement programs is a design of programs for the elderly, who are more often women, because women live longer and because their work histories often lead to reduced levels of pension and social security benefits.

Description: The appeal of the actuarial profession to women.

Description: The Society of Actuaries (SOA) and the LIMRA Secure Retirement Institute are pleased to present the results of new research on the retirement market in China.

Description: This paper is a concept for U.S. pension reform.

Description: This research report is sponsored by The Society of Actuaries and the Canadian Institute of Actuaries on the Canadian health care system. Performed by Stéphane Levert, FSA, FCIA, the study (available in French and English) estimated the future costs of the Canadian health care system, assessed the sustainability of the system over a 25-year horizon, and analyzed the implications of the changes to the Canada Health Transfer proposed on Dec. 19, 2011 by the federal government. The report summarizing the findings indicates that, without significant government intervention, the Canadian health care system in its current form is not sustainable.

Description: Speaker examines economic globalization and other reasons for actuaries to reconsider how we think about risks in the future. From the 1987 Record of Society of Actuaries, Vol. 13, No. 4B.