Description: Highlights of the Smaller Insurance Company Section's significant contributions at recent Society of Actuaries' events

Description: In order to encourage health insurance issuers to offer health insurance coverage on the Exchange and on the individual and small group markets, while ameliorating the potential impact on any particular health insurance issuer of providing coverage without pricing for pre-existing conditions or the gender of the insured, the Affordable Care Act includes three risk-sharing programs: the Transitional Reinsurance program, the Risk Corridor program and the Risk Adjustment program (collectively referred to as the “3Rs”). The financial and tax reporting of each health insurance issuer is affected by the implementation of these risk-sharing programs because each health insurance issuer is required to pay for the programs’ costs, and some issuers are or will be eligible for benefits under them.

Description: Recent advances in mortality modeling have enabled applicant-specific quantification of mortality risk in life insurance applicants using laboratory and physical measurements. Relative to more conventional underwriting, this approach identifies a small population of significantly under-priced policy and a much larger, cross-subsidizing group whose risk is presently overestimated. Applicants placed in the highest percentile by this scoring methodology are more than 10X as likely to die in a given period as their demographic peers, and represent approximately 5% of short-term claims. Implications for product design are substantial in both the short- and long-term, as the possibilities for adverse selection grow, and the opportunity for fully individualized pricing raises the more distant prospect of products with as many rate classes as applicants.

Description: This research scorecard will keep section members informed about research projects sponsored or co-sponsored by the Financial Reporting Section.

Description: An interview with Sheryl Flum, chief, Branch 4, IRS Office of Associate Chief Counsel (Financial Institutions and Products) at the Internal Revenue Service, regarding her role at the IRS and current tax issues facing the life insurance industry.

Description: Highlights of the 2013 Intercompany Long-Term Care Insurance (ILTCI) Conference

Description: Chairperson’s column discussing a few of the important initiatives of the Financial Reporting Section

Description: This article discusses the results of the elections for the SOA Product Development Section Council and introduces the individuals that will be new members of the council for 2014.

Description: This paper develops a conceptually rigorous formulation of the cost of capital method for estimating margins for mortality, lapse, expense and other forms of underwriting risk.

Description: This article highlights some key points for IFRS 17 Variable fee approach (VFA) and provides an illustrative example on the measurement model logic.