Description: Actuaries may soon be required to select assumptions that are individually reasonable when measuring pension obligations. This is the core meaning of a proposed amendment to the Actuarial Standard of Practice #4 in addition to the proposed ASOP on economic assumptions.

Description: Chronicles the two-year history of the Committee on Life Insurance Company Valuation Principles, COLICVP, and looks ahead to the future.

Description: This article announces that the Society Board has reaffirmed its desire to adopt actuarial principles as statements of opinion by forming a new Committee on Actuarial Principles. The types of principles considered are Basic Principles, Methodology Principles = Techniques, and Behavioral Principles = Standards of Practice.

Description: This author makes a few suggestions for how the ASB can improve the way it defines and sets standards of practice in light of the challenges actuaries face today. The author believes that ASOP's hould be promulgated by the ASB ony after a thorough process that goes beyond codifying existing practices.

Description: Discussion as to whether within an organization an actuary's regulatory role can conflict with his business-oriented role or be aligned with the strategic goals of the company.

Description: By definition, actuaries are preeminent in making actuarial analyses. Nevertheless, in some areas, such analyses can be adequately performed by persons from other professions, such as economists and statisticians. This article describes the misuse of life expectancy data by the Heritage Foundation when they 'calculated' that low-income, single African-American males born after 1959 face a negative rate of return from Social Security. Unfortunately, this misinformation was widely disseminated through the news media and Web sites.

Description: Discussion of the 1998 Generally Recognized Expense Table GRET and questions pertaining to the acceptable use of the GRET to demonstrate compliance with the NAIC Life Insurance Illustrations Model Regulation.

Description: Letter from the SOA president describing what he thinks actuaries’ responsibilities to the public are.

Description: First of a 2 part series: The Actuarial Science Program at the University of Nebraska includes a course on Actuarial Roles and Ethics. In 1978 the students in this class sent a questionnaire to 265 persons, mostly alumni of the Program, aimed at finding out how actuaries see themselves, and to what extent ethical questions have impinged upon them. This article gives answers by 61 Fellows 60 F.S.A.'s and one F.C.A.S.

Description: This article is about the fourth conference of the International Association of Consulting Actuaries that was held in Amsterdam on May 26 to 30, 1974. Consulting actuaries, as advisers to pension plans and insurance companies, are facing serious and surprisingly similar problems in the countries represented. While many topics were covered, the key areas appeared to be inflation, social security, regulations, relationships with accountants and professional responsibility.