Description: An update on the principle-based reserves (PBR) process and possible valuation manual adoption, with recommendations to actuaries on how to prepare.

Description: In this article, we explore key insights from Oliver Wyman's 2020 Life PBR Emerging Practices Survey, which provides a broad industry perspective with more than 50 companies participating representing 95 percent of the individual life market (by written premium). Insights include the impact of PBR on reserves and profitability in addition to emerging practices related to product design, assumption development, and methodology decisions.

Description: Author traces the tax treatment of deficiency reserves, beginning with the 1959 Act, illustrating how the decisions made in the development of the 1959 Act continue to affect the tax treatment of those reserves today.

Description: Actuary/accountant/tax attorney dialogue on recent guidance issued regarding treatment of deficiency reserves with respect to the “statutory reserves cap” of Internal Revenue Code section 807(d)(1).

Description: This article summarizes VM-31 updates to the 2018 and 2019 Valuation Manuals, and considerations for PBR Reports based on findings from the 2017 submissions.

Description: The paper explores developments through 2006 in the application of market-consistent concepts to the measurement of fair values of liabilities for financial reporting purposes. A set of criteria is presented that should be useful in the evaluation of proposed fair value measurement approaches where inputs based on prices observed in an active market with reliable transaction prices are not available. Based on these criteria, one approach is examined that might serve as a basis for the fair value measurement of the liability of life insurance contracts and other financial instruments issued by insurers.

Description: Summary of SOA research report "Optimizing Risk Retention" which applies parametric survival models and Monte Carlo simulation to a block of term life business.

Description: This panel discussion focuses on valuation and nonforfeiture developments. Topics covered include purpose of Society's Committee on Valuation and Related Problems, current valuation regulatory developments, industry studies in the United States, report of the Society's Special Committee on Nonforfeiture Laws, annuity nonforfeiture values, and sex-distinct mortality tables for valuation and nonforfeiture purposes.

Description: In November 2020 the Life Actuarial (A) Task Force unanimously passed APF 2020-08 which adds a third permissible method in the Valuation Manual to determine company experience mortality rates. This article describes the three methods

Description: This article discusses many of the complexities of the new IDI valuation table and how they might impact the implementation process.