Description: This paper defines Distributable Earnings as the generalized pricing and valuation framework for financial contracts containing the requirement to hold capital or reserves in support of the obligations. It examines the Market Value paradigm and its foundation arising from the pricing of fixed income securities. It reconciles these two methods, showing that market value methods ignore mandatory capital and reserve requirements, which carry both risk and cost. The paper makes the case for the Distributable Earnings framework, not Market Value, as the true basis for economic value for these financial contracts. Finally, it concludes that this framework must be employed in risk-management processes, else fail to recognize a significant source of risk.

Description: This paper defines Distributable Earnings as the generalized pricing and valuation framework for financial contracts containing the requirement to hold capital or reserves in support of the obligations. It examines the Market Value paradigm and its foundation arising from the pricing of fixed income securities. It reconciles these two methods, showing that market value methods ignore mandatory capital and reserve requirements, which carry both risk and cost. The paper makes the case for the Distributable Earnings framework, not Market Value, as the true basis for economic value for these financial contracts. Finally, it concludes that this framework must be employed in risk-management processes, else fail to recognize a significant source of risk.

Description: Panelists at this session of the SOA 2001 Toronto Spring Meeting give an overview of the new methodology to compute the C-3 component of statutory risk-based capital and quantification of the impact of the change in methodology. Issues from a regulatory perspective and from a company perspective are discussed.

Description: Panelists discuss: [1] two American Council of Life Insurance [ACLI] studies, one covering U.S. programs and the other covering Canadian programs, [2] characteristics and attitudes of Americans aged 50 to 64, [3] older baby boomers as potential customers, and [4] long-range consequences of baby boomers on social insurance programs. From the 1987 Record of Society of Actuaries, Vol. 13, No. 4A.