Description: Hubert Mueller describes why unit-linked products are increasingly popular in Europe and provides his outlook for continued growth.

Description: Read the May 2019 issue of International News published by the International Section of the Society of Actuaries. Newsletters provide practical information for the working actuary, articles on trends that impact sections and news about section activities.

Description: Update on the actuarial profession in Malaysia where the current major concern is the issue of risk based capital.

Description: Sustainable operations under changes in accounting principles and solvency standards

Description: The core of actuarial work involves assessing the present value of future liabilities. This requires us to make assumptions about the future. The future is inherently uncertain. Communicating that uncertainty to others is a major challenge for actuaries.

Description: In this article, the author discusses the new IAA strategic plan for dealing with global financial risk.

Description: Joseph Lu considers the risk of pandemics and whether actuaries can go beyond just modelling financial losses towards working on prevention

Description: Read the October 2020 issue of International News published by the International Section. Newsletters provide practical information for the working actuary, articles on trends that impact sections and news about section activities.

Description: Just in the recent two years, COVID-19 has demonstrated very impressively that a pandemic is not something for which one can fully prepare. However, what makes a pandemic so special and difficult to manage compared to other low frequency and high severity events such as volcanic eruptions or tsunami damage? Frank Schillerexplains what makes a pandemic so different, viz, information uncertainty, exponential growth, and time lags.

Description: Countries developing universal health care via an insurance vehicle face a variety of challenges. Deciding which benefits to include, where to proactively manage health, and how to reimburse network providers are just a sampling of the issues governments concurrently manage. Optimal choices are data-driven responses. For example, high rates of cervical cancer or increasing narcotics prescriptions are trends that can be managed through product changes, modified network payment structures, or even employer based outreach. This kind of information is typically gleaned from established health insurance claims data. However, in emerging health insurance markets, this level of granular claims data is largely missing. It is difficult to manage medical trend when the root causes are unclear. This article explores a pilot medical underwriting project in Jordan.