Description: FASB's Statement of Financial Accounting Standards No. 97 contains wide-sweeping changes to the preparation of GAAP financials for insurance companies. The focus of this article will be on the ramifications of the interest rate FASB has decided to use to amortize deferred acquisition costs.

Description: This article discusses the growing popularity of variable products and compares the product design and pricing of VUL and UL products.

Description: This article is an extract from a revision to the Universal Life Study Note. From Product Development Section Monograph, M-AS99-3.

Description: This paper explores the use of linear programming as a tool to guide policyholders in getting the most value out of their combined insurance and investment programs. Concentrating on flexible premium universal life within the tax environment of the United States, several linear programming models are developed that can be used at the point of sale, to select the most cost effective policy from those available in the marketplace, and after issue to maximize the present value of future cash flows on the policy of an insured who is in ill-health. From Actuarial Research Clearing House 1991, VOL. 3.

Description: The Universal Life Work Group ULWG of the American Academy of Actuaries’ AAA Life Valuation Subcommittee was formed in July 2004. Its charge is to develop a new “principle-based” approach definition follows for statutory reserves and capital requirements for life products with certain types of benefits and guarantees, where the value of the contract obligations vary significantly due to such things as future interest rates or equity returns.

Description: This paper applies the research in Prospect Theory of Kahneman and Tversky to explain why sales of annuities lag sales of life insurance products. The author theorizes that life insurance is easier to sell because customers perceive themselves to be in the domain of losses, while potential annuity customers perceive themselves to be in the domain of gains. Kahneman and Tversky showed us that people are mostly risk averse in the domain of gains and risk seeking in the domain of losses. Purchase of an annuity or life product is a risky investment. Customers will find it easier to take the risk in the life insurance domain of losses than the annuity domain of gains. The author then proposes a hybrid life annuity product that might address both mortality and longevity risk in one product that would allow both products to be more competitive than stand-alone products.

Description: 1988 Valuation Actuary Symposium. In this session the speaker described the attributes of a UL policy, how his company invested the cash that was built up, valuation of the product, modeling in general, the specific model structure for Universal Life, problems encountered in the modeling process, and some of the more interesting aspects of the results.

Description: Milliman, Inc. recently conducted a comprehensive survey of leading UL insurers to discover current dynamics of the UL market. The scope of the survey included UL with secondary guarantees ULSG, cash accumulation UL, current assumption UL, and indexed UL.

Description: 1999 SOA Regional Meeting, Atlanta. In this session on next-generation UL, the panelists explored 1999 product development issues relating to the general account/non-equity-indexed universal life product.

Description: This guide is intended to provide a broad introduction to several performance-oriented products. It distinguishes variable 'equity-linked' life insurance, universal life 'flexible payment and current fixed yields', variable universal life, and current developments in variable annuities 'primarily minimum death benefits'.