Description: February 2016 issue of Product Matters!

Description: Read the July 2016 issue of Product Matters!

Description: The world around us keeps changing F.A.S.T. propelling life insurance companies to respond with F.R.E.S.H. product solutions.

Description: Recent advances in mortality modeling have enabled applicant-specific quantification of mortality risk in life insurance applicants using laboratory and physical measurements. Relative to more conventional underwriting, this approach identifies a small population of significantly under-priced policy and a much larger, cross-subsidizing group whose risk is presently overestimated. Applicants placed in the highest percentile by this scoring methodology are more than 10X as likely to die in a given period as their demographic peers, and represent approximately 5% of short-term claims. Implications for product design are substantial in both the short- and long-term, as the possibilities for adverse selection grow, and the opportunity for fully individualized pricing raises the more distant prospect of products with as many rate classes as applicants.

Description: This article discusses the results of the elections for the SOA Product Development Section Council and introduces the individuals that will be new members of the council for 2014.

Description: Compares how other industries (in this case, Fast Food) researches and tests new products. Provides examples of how the insurance industry can efficiently research and test new product concepts before going to market.

Description: Hot topics and emerging trends in assumption development in US life insurance companies

Description: Defines Accelerated Underwriting programs as a transformational trend, and outlines a process for evaluating mortality implications of such programs.

Description: Six years after the global financial crisis, the reshaped contours of the market for the life insurance industry are coming into focus.