Description: The Proposed Accounting Standards Update was exposed on September 29, 2016 with the comment period ending on December 15, 2016.

Description: Discussion of some of the implications of FAS 133 Implementation Issue B36 for the Financial Reporting of Reinsurance

Description: Variable Annuity DAC: A Survey of Current Practice by Laura J. Hay and Elizabeth Rogalin from The Financial Reporter, December 2002, Issue No. 51. Examines the DAC calculation for Variable Annuities and the possible write down of DAC under revised assumptions.

Description: The introduction and effective application of US GAAP LDTI have increased the scrutiny of those reviewing the updated financial results. That is because LDTI has resulted in significant changes in actuarial reserving and deferred acquisition cost (DAC) models for long-duration contracts, including significant changes to data, assumptions and required disclosures. In light of the changes, greater reliance has been put on companies’ model risk management (MRM) teams and model validations to assess the conceptual soundness and accuracy of their companies’ actuarial models and to assess that the underlying data and process utilized are suitable and appropriate. This article covers a brief background on model validation, walk through a sample LDTI-focused model validation framework/test plan, then provide insights on common LDTI-related validation observations based on the authors' prior validation experience.

Description: This article is a brief review of the Society of Actuaries 1981 monograph ‘Adverse Deviation,’ by John C. Wooddy et. al. The author of this review notes that the monograph describes the approach - devised by the Committee on Theory of Risk - to ‘the problem of providing appropriately for the risks of adverse deviation in a GAAP valuation under the specifications of the ‘Audit Guide for Stock Life Insurance Companies.’

Description: This paper discusses approaches for reporting pre-need plans in the Phillipines under the generally accepted accounting principles of the United States “U.S. GAAP. In particular, a focus is on contracts accounted for under SFAS 97 investment-oriented contracts.

Description: Discussion of FAS 133 Implementation Issue B36 relating to the implications for the financial reporting of modco and similar reinsurance treaties where the assuming company assumes some investment risk from assets still owned by the ceding company.

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: This article from The Actuary, April 1971, volume 5, Issue 4 talks about an exposure draft. The Exposure Draft of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants on Audits of Life Insurance Companies has not apparently had among actuaries the wide circulation it deserves, judging by the relatively few responses to Robert Winters letter in the February issue of The Actuary. This is a most important document because it affects not only the accounting practices of life insurance companies but also the status of the actuarial profession.

Description: A review of Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, including a review of the need for life and health insurance actuaries to review and, in most cases, substantially strengthen their internal controls over financial reporting.