Description: In this article, the author examines the black holes that arise every day in the form of pressures such as: competitive, top line growth, staff expertise, and regulatory to name a few.

Description: Panel dicussion on the need for information to keep a block of long-term care insurance profitable: what the business risks are, what is being done to mitigate them, what kind of reports are needed, and how these differ from reporting on other types of health insurance.

Description: Comments on Robert North’s paper, a real case study of disclosing MVL in a public employee retirement system.

Description: How King Price has developed behavioral economics, digitization and big data to become one of the fastest growing non-life insurance companies in South Africa.

Description: This article is a synopsis of a 2017 Society of Actuaries annual meeting session of the same title.

Description: A discussion about the increasing risks associated with the National Flood Insurance Program in the U.S., including discussion of its history as well as key issues associated with its continuation in its present form.

Description: Abstract: Interest rate changes and volatile equity returns have contributed to significant funding and expense volatility for defined benefit plans in recent years. This paper will describe the design of an option contract with payouts that are tied to the combined impact of interest rates and investment returns on the funding level of a defined benefit pension plan. Current derivatives used by plan sponsors can limit exposure to one of these risks; however, a derivative that combines these risks may provide more targeted protection to a plan sponsor at lower cost. This paper discusses several considerations in designing such a derivative. It will also briefly discuss pricing of the option. Finally, the difference in potential outcomes between plan funding with and without option ownership will be demonstrated. As an outcome of the design work, a new way to visualize pension risk that may be useful in sponsor accounting disclosures will be shown.

Description: While Model Efficiency and Model Governance may seem like completely separate topics, there is an intersection of them that should be of growing interest to modeling actuaries. This column from the Modeling Section Chair explores this area, asking how we will govern the increasing use of innovative modeling efficiency techniques.

Description: Read the August 2016 issue of Risk Management published by the Joint Risk Management Section. Newsletters provide practical information for the working actuary, articles on trends that impact sections and news about section activities.

Description: This paper analyzes the optimal retention level with a portfolio of insurance risks, and premiums invested in risk-free and risky assets. Optimality is defined here as maximizing expected utility of terminal payout.