Description: This article summarizes the treatment of changes in the basis for determining life insurance tax reserves under prior law and describes the changes enacted by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. It further explains the procedures for changing the basis of computing reserves under the new rules as outlined in Revenue Procedure 2019-10, the IRS’s December 2018 guidance on the subject, and discusses the uncertainties that remain.

Description: The August/September 2015 edition of The Actuary magazine—the Society of Actuaries’ flagship publication.

Description: The April/May 2016 edition of The Actuary magazine—the Society of Actuaries’ flagship publication.

Description: One of the most important influences on the development of an insurance market and on the development of professions, such as the actuarial profession, is the nature of regulation. This paper looks at four main economic models of regulation: 1. Market socialism, 2. Freedom with publicity, 3. Public interest, and 4. Public choice theory. The role of profession and other sophisticated products of the market order are also analysed.

Description: This paper investigates a fundamental approach to the development of the expected cost of vesting in pension plans. From Transactions of Society of Actuaries 1972, Vol. 24, Pt. 1, No. 70.

Description: As part of the 2019 Disruptions to the Actuarial Profession Contest, this essay posits that the actuarial profession should respond to other fields encroaching on its space, particularly software development and data science, not by a defensive reaction to establish a boundary between fields but instead by a welcoming attitude that seeks to utilize expertise from other fields while maintaining the actuarial role of comprehensive risk management and its hard-earned professional trust.

Description: The world is changing at an increasing pace and is disrupting everything from how one orders goods and services to how they take a taxi or Uber. Increasingly, this disruption is affecting the work of actuaries. Moreover, actuaries are being asked to provide more value-added services. Not only is this requiring actuaries to leverage exponential technologies not traditionally used in the insurance industry, but it is also impacting the types of staffing and training models utilized by actuaries. With a broader trend to alternative workforce arrangements, such as the gig economy and crowdsourcing, how will actuaries transition to this new future of working? What are the different types of off-balance sheet workers? How can companies create a strategy to deal with the hybrid workforce that involves different types of workers, cross-country borders, and other changes? This session will outline how actuaries and actuarial functions can successfully prepare themselves for this change.

Description: The June/July 2014 edition of The Actuary magazine—the Society of Actuaries’ flagship publication.

Description: Diabetes mellitus type 2 is an excellent model for assessing the setup of medical coverage in the U.S. health care system. It is a chronic disease that has genetic, behavioral and other medical causes, and causes many complications over the long term. From Financing Chronic Care Monograph, M-HB05-1.

Description: The October/November 2015 edition of The Actuary magazine—the Society of Actuaries’ flagship publication.