Description: Breakout Sessions 1A: The Fundamentals of Pricing for Underwriters

Description: In this article, the authors give their overview of sessions that they attended at the June 2012 Life and Annuity Symposium. The sessions discussed are Life Insurance Illustration Regulation (15 years later), Advanced Mortality Topics, and Life and Annuity Product Development Strategies in the Wake of Low Interest Rates.

Description: This article contains a summary of some of the presentations given at the October 2012 SOA Annual Meeting. This article does not cover all sessions that are related to product development, but shares observations that have been made by various members of the SOA Product Development Section Council.

Description: Two recent SOA research projects will be discussed. The first covers analysis of the drivers of mortality that shaped trends in US mortality. The second will look at using causes of death to predict future mortality improvements

Description: In this session, the presenters will discuss (1) results from a recent study of credibility applications in the pricing of group long term disability business, (2) morbidity experience from individual disability business, and (3) lessons can be learned from each line of business.

Description: This article gives examples of how an actuary can live by the actuarial motto of substituting facts for appearances. The specific examples given are setting the mortality for table shaved individual life business and setting late duration lapse assumptions for level term business.

Description: Presenters will discuss mortality improvement as it applies to various lines of business with an emphasis on how individual life findings can be used to fine tune group life assumptions. In particular, it is important to know that there is not a single percentage of annual mortality improvement. Rather, experience shows that the rate of mortality improvement varies by factors such as attained age and target market.

Description: This article contains a summary of some of the presentations given at the May 2013 SOA Life & Annuity Symposium. This article does not cover all sessions that are related to product development, but shares observations that have been made by various members of the SOA Product Development Section Council.

Description: This article describes how actuaries can get involved in research being conducted by the Society of Actuaries.

Description: An update on the status of the Product Development Section's research projects.