Description: Telehealth continues to be a story of unrealized potential than realized success. Find out what's pushing telehealth forward as a means of remote healthcare and the challenges its facing. Discuss questions, including: - Telehealth's role in expanding access to mental healthcare is clear, but what about other conditions? - Was access expanded for all patients or do modern delivery methods leave some patients behind - How do telehealth costs compare to in-person costs? - What happens to the value proposition if unit cost savings is off the table?

Description: U.S. population death statistics and trends often occupy COVID-19 briefings and daily headlines. There are also publicly available mortality data sources for actuaries and others to perform their own analysis. Yet industry studies examining the impact of COVID-19 on insured populations are in their infancy. In this webcast, presenters will provide insights into how the life insured population is faring during COVID-19 by discussing the findings from two recent SOA research initiatives. LIMRA, RGA Reinsurance, the Society of Actuaries and TAI have collaborated on an effort to analyze the impact of COVID-19 on the individual life insurance industry’s mortality experience. Additionally, the SOA has surveyed insurers to gather a high-level view of U.S. Group Term Life Insurance mortality results during the COVID-19 pandemic and comparing them to pre-pandemic mortality levels.

Description: Congress authorized the creation of the RAISE Family Caregiving Advisory Council in 2018. The Council, comprised of family caregivers and experts from a wide variety of stakeholder organizations in both the private and public sector, have been engaged in an in-depth research effort over the last two years to develop recommendations and an implementation plan to address our national caregiving crisis. This article describes their work and the newly released Report to Congress.

Description: Through the sponsorship of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, The Society of Actuaries partnered with Wakely to use their health care data to study the effects of COVID-19 on overall health care claims for individuals with a COVID-19 diagnosis. The conclusion of the study is that individuals with COVID-19 claims had significant increases in health care costs leading up to their months of diagnosis, as well as in the months following their diagnosis. These effects were more pronounced for individuals who were hospitalized due to COVID-19 as well as for individuals with prior co-morbidities. Finally, the overall health care costs of these members plateaued at significantly higher levels than their pre-COVID baselines. In fact, all the main membership cohorts experienced claim levels that were at least 20% higher than their pre-COVID starting points.

Description: This report, from the Society of Actuaries [SOA] ‘Experience Studies – Individual Annuities,’ was prepared by the SOA Task Force on Mortality Guarantees in Variable Products. This study of mortality on deferred variable annuities over the period 1991-1995 was designed to test the adequacy of the 1994 MGDB Valuation Mortality Table to cover presumed extra mortality on variable annuities [Vas] with Substantial Minimum Guaranteed Death Benefits [MGDBs] as compared with VAs with Minimal MGDBs. A parallel study of fixed annuity experience was carried out as a control. In addition to report includes a six page document of instructions to participating companies.

Description: The National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) has developed the Group Capital Calculation (GCC) for U.S.-based insurance groups since late 2015. GCC is designed to provide a coherent analytical framework to show a panoramic, transparent view of the interconnectedness, business activities and underlying capital support for an insurance group. The last field testing was completed in May 2019. The final proposal was adopted in late 2020. The Federal Reserve Board (FSB) also recently updated the group capital standard to an aggregation method, which is similar to the NAIC GCC. The Insurance Capital Standard (ICS) is under the development by International Association of Insurance Supervisors (IAIS) for Internationally Active Insurance Groups (IAIGs). It has entered the five-monitoring period from January 2020 to monitor the performance of the ICS V2.0 and the IAIS will perform a comparability assessment of the ICS V2.0 with the Aggregation Method (e.g. NAIC GCC) during this period.

Description: The limited availability of life and protection cover for people living with certain serious health conditions is starting to become a critical issue for insurers. The public perception is that insurers simply don’t offer cover, or that it is difficult to source affordable, tailored cover. This article discusses the considerations when trying to improve access to insurance.

Description: 2021 Life Meeting - Session 8A: Use of Electronic Health Records in the Assessment of Life and Health Risks 9.1.21 Recording

Description: The Society of Actuaries is honored to announce the recipients of the Outstanding Session Awards for the 2021 Life Meeting that took place virtually Aug. 30 – Sept. 1.

Description: This paper helps the audience understand the actuary’s role in estimating the financial impact of primary care programs. In addition, the paper can be used by actuaries to think about key issues when estimating the financial impact of their employers’ and clients’ own primary care programs.