Description: 1994 SOA Spring Meeting, Orlando. This teaching session introduced Course 230 to seasoned actuaries who missed the opportunity to study ALM material on their road to Fellowship. The focus of this session was to expose the various subjects covered, identify reading materials, and highlight a few topics.

Description: In session 26PD of the 2004 Valuation Actuary Symposium, discussed is how the new Medicare prescription drug legislation creates a number of issues for employers and managed-care plans. Employers must determine the impact of the legislation on their retiree prescription drug costs, evaluate options for plan design and make decisions about how to reflect the effect of the legislation in their FAS 106 valuations. Managed-care plans need to review the effect of the legislation on plan design, statutory filings and financial reporting for their Medicare products.

Description: Failures of several major insurance companies during the past decade have helped focus public and regulatory attention on the financial strength of the insurance industry. These failures have highlighted the need for new techniques to evaluate the risk assumed by management due to business decisions. “Dynamic Financial Condition Analysis” (“Dynamic Solvency Testing” in Canada) is one new tool for analyzing these risks.

Description: This article announces the release of a handbook written by the DFCA Task Force for assisting actuaries who are doing Dynamic Financial Condition Analysis.

Description: This article reports on a meeting of the Finance Practice Area and the issues on which they are focusing.

Description: Discusses a new SOA course on derivative securities.

Description: Update on Health Section research projects and topics, including new vision and mission statements for the Health Section Council, research and communications projects, and information about the Health Actuarial Research Initiative.

Description: This article describes the three new textbooks that are in the three courses for the Finance Track. They cover derivatives and corporate finance.

Description: Presenter of session 48OF of the New York Annual Meeting discusses the psychology of investing. From the Record of the Society of Actuaries, Vol. 24, No. 3.

Description: Presented at October 1996 Annual Meeting. Discusses the latest additions to the Handbook, recent developments/requirements in Canada, and current research to support the Dynamic Financial Condition Analysis Handbook.