Description: This article provides an introduction to the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement and Modernization Act of 2003 and looks at how the Medicare prescription drug plan will affect the commercial market as well as, what PDPs will offer for benefits and if any will offer supplemental benefits. From Health Section News, March 2005, Issue No. 49.

Description: Actuaries pride themselves on innovation and advancements; but no professional field has pushed to set the bar higher than medical Radiology. Over the course of the last few decades, medicine has begun to rely more on artificial intelligence to aid in the process of patient care; and the results have been outstanding! This article looks to show how high the bar has been set, how it will impact the current state of the world of the actuary and the future impacts

Description: Provides perspective on how risk has been shared in a variety of retirement and insurance arrangements, and suggestions some ideas for innovations and different risk sharing in the future. Traditional retirement program are defined benefit and defined contribution, which have very different methods of risk sharing. The new ideas share risk differently. Offers some history of retirement and risk sharing. Goal is to improve retirement security.

Description: Businesses across the board have been drastically impacted by the effects of COVID-19 over the course of 2020, and insurance was not immune. Perhaps most relevant to this industry’s current capital and liquidity concern is the prevailing low interest rate environment. This has been a global trend in the last decade, and treasury rates in much of the developed world are at or near zero. Reduced investment returns limit an insurer’s ability to achieve their desired return on equity, eliminating previously profitable strategies that depended on the leverage of life and annuity balance sheets. Focus and activity have instead shifted to other methods to counteract the low interest rate markets and accompanying capital strain. Examples include increased mergers and acquisitions (M&A) activity within the insurance industry and an increasing focus by private equity firms in the insurance market for asset-intensive products, both of which reflect the goal of increasing yield rates on capital.

Description: This is an article about the struggles and successes of female actuaries working in the United Kingdom.

Description: Describes the challenges of using replacement ratios for retirement planning and suggests alternative approaches including spending strategies such as the 4% rule or divide your age by 20 (Feel Free spending) rule. Identifies and prioritizes different types of spending needs including sustenance, lifestyle, health care and bequest. In addition the article provides data showing how spending typically drops as retirees age and discusses how to take this into account when planning when to retire or how much to spend in retirement.

Description: Monetary policies of major central banks have undergone tremendous changes. In fact, it has become the basic tendency for major central banks to minimize the risk-free rate and the real interest rate and to postpone macro credit risk to its utmost extent. This tendency will have a profound impact on the bond and stock markets involving insurance institutions. The long-term asset allocation of insurance institutions needs to adapt to this change.

Description: Presented at October 1986 Annual Meeting. This session discusses new forms of compensation that are being utilized, the impact on product design, and the impact on company profitability.

Description: Essay submission on impact of COVID-19 on retirement.

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