Description: Negotiation has been a critical skill for me for most of my career. I’ve worked as a product actuary, represented a major distributor and now I’m a reinsurance intermediary. Technical actuarial skills were never my strength. However, I’m often able to get parties with differing goals to find a common ground, enabling a project to be completed to everyone’s satisfaction. From The Stepping Stone, April 2005, Issue No. 18.

Description: The Joint Risk Management Section is trying to develop better estimates of policyholder behavior in the tail [PBITT]. The mission of the PBITT working group is to examine and ultimately give guidance to actuaries on how to set policyholder assumptions in extreme scenarios. As part of its work, the PBITT working group issued its sixth survey to gather the range of 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. This web page contains a link to the survey results.

Description: The Joint Risk Management Section is trying to develop better estimates of policyholder behavior in the tail [PBITT]. The mission of the PBITT working group is to examine and ultimately give guidance to actuaries on how to set policyholder assumptions in extreme scenarios. As part of its work, the PBITT working group issued its sixth survey to gather the range of 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. This document contains the results of that survey.

Description: Feature article discussing the current state of reinsurance for the variable annuity market.

Description: 2004 SOA Annual Meeting and Exhibit, New York. The panelists addressed fixed annuity regulatory issues with emphasis on the annuity nonforfeiture law, current trends and product design, and how reinsurance can address the conflicting issues of competitiveness and profitability.

Description: Combo long-term care insurance products provide a viable option for the insurance industry to offer a sufficient range and supply of private long-term care financing solutions.

Description: Full version of Smaller Consulting Firm Section, October 2005, Issue No. 9.

Description: A good consultant is supposed to come up with solutions to their clients’ problems. However, the most elegant solution will not be perceived as such until the problem or issue is important enough to the client for them to want to spend time and resources on a solution. Until that time, your idea may gather dust on the shelf along with those of other dormant geniuses.

Description: 1994 SOA Meeting, San Francisco. This session discussed variable annuities and how direct companies use reinsurance to mitigate death and investment risk. Variable annuities and the enhanced death benefit were addressed from the direct and reinsurance sides.

Description: Full version of The Stepping Stone Newsletter, April 2005, Issue No. 18.