Description: On October 30, 2015, the SOA Assumption Development and Governance Group, an informal discussion group consisting of nearly 200 interested actuaries with topics pertaining to actuarial assumption development and governance, organized an industry discussion call on end-to-end assumption documentation practices. The purpose of this call was to generate a large list of ideas for best-practice assumption documentation. More than thirty companies were represented in the call, including direct insurers, reinsurers and consulting firms. This article is the work product of the discussion written by Laurie Li and Alex Zaidlin.

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

Description: Discussion the issues/difficulties associated with setting mortality assumptions for the later durations of life insurance illustrations. Because some UL products incorporate low cost of insurance charges in late durations as part of the current scale in the product design, some conclude that mortality improvement assumptions are being employed in the disciplined current scale, in violation of the Model Illustrations Regulation.

Description: Discussion of American Academy of Actuaries Illustrations Work Group. This article deals specifically with the issue of using mortality improvement assumptions in the illustrations prohibited by the Model Illustration Regulation, suspected in some cases because some UL products incorporate low cost of insurance charges in late durations as part of their product design.