Description: This article examines the development of the new Brazilian annuitant mortality table, and explores the current and future effects of this table.

Description: New Zealand is about to launch its first variable annuity with guaranteed lifetime withdrawal benefits. The product design is mindful of the lessons from the financial crisis in the United States, Europe and Japan.

Description: Help to generate ideas for formulating a pricing strategy of 2015 individual health insurance products despite having very limited claims and premium experience in early 2014.

Description: The article summarizes several recent private letter rulings from the IRS addressing the "investor control" doctrine in the context of funds of funds.

Description: Retirement income security under defined contribution plans depends upon sufficient savings and decumulating that savings so it provides an adequate income throughout retirement. Investment risk and longevity risk inherently complicate the latter task. The economic rationale for annuitization is clear in this context. However, annuitization rates have historically been very low, a phenomenon that is still not well understood. If retirees are making “rational” decisions based on full information, if their choices are consistent with the pursuit of their financial priorities, then low annuitization rates are not an issue for concern. In this case, retirees who annuitize and retirees who do not must have different financial priorities. However, research by the TIAA Institute shows that the decision to not annuitize is inconsistent with the stated financial priorities of most non-annuitants. It appears that non-annuitants do not und erstand that annuitization would address their financial priorities for retirement.

Description: In session 81PD of the Montreal Spring Meeting panelists discuss the results of the Life Insurance Marketing and Research Association LIMRA/SOA 1992-94 Annuity Persistency study. From the Record of the Society of Actuaries, Vol. 23, No. 2.

Description: Results of the PBITT Working Group annual VA survey.

Description: Examination of full surrender and benefit utilization industry experience for Variable Annuities with and without Guaranteed Lifetime Withdrawal Benefits. Part 1 of 3 articles focuses on full surrenders and building a dynamic surrender function using predictive modeling tools.

Description: This is a report on the PBITT Working Group's fourth survey to gather the assumptions actuaries use in pricing, reserving, and risk management of minimum guarantees on Variable Annuity products, such as death benefits, income benefits, withdrawal benefits and maturity benefits.

Description: This paper demonstrates that extreme value theory (EVT) can be used as a tool to model policyholder behavior in the extreme tail. This paper applies EVT to the study of variable annuity dynamic lapse behavior in the extreme tail. It illustrates a process whereby a company can fully model policyholder behavior, including the extreme tail, with existing data. No judgment about the extremal behavior is necessary.