Description: This article discusses reserving issues for life insurance products with limited level premium guarantees or no-lapse guarantees, and capital markets solutions as an alternative to traditional reinsurance for relief from redundant reserve strain.

Description: Discussion of the evolving role of reinsurance in driving business decisions for the direct side, with particular emphasis on underwriting and risk classification and the emphasis on automatic versus facultative business.

Description: This article summarizes insights from a 2021 survey of more than 40 life insurance companies with a focus on trends in reinsurand and in-force management. While reinsurance objectives and methods have remained steadfast in a sea of economic and regulatory impacts, life companies still are looking at different solutions to make improvements in profitability, stability, and scale.

Description: An executive perspective on strategy and risk in reinsurance.

Description: This article discusses the impact of consolidation in the U.S. life reinsurance

Description: Insurers buy reinsurance for a variety of reasons, but an insurer’s accounting rules and solvency regulations are inevitably at the heart of the decision. Whether they are primary drivers or simply help insurers judge acceptable pricing for a risk- or service-motivated transaction, these rules and regulations are a key part of the equation.

Description: Highlights the key takeaways from the 2021 published SOA PLT study on lapse and mortality experience of US term plans in the post level term period. This article explains the new insights in the latest study including a comparison of PLT experience between Jump to ART and Graded structures. The important variables driving PLT experience and the relationship between lapse and mortality experience are also discussed.

Description: Summary of the results of the 2011 Life Reinsurance Survey. Included are US and Canadian individual life results for recurring, portfolio and retrocession reinsurance.

Description: Insurance companies significantly expanded their use of life reinsurance throughout the late '90s and early '00s. This has meant that volumes being ceded to the reinsurance market have continued to expand after a brief respite in 2001 through quota share opportunities with direct insurers keeping only a portion of their published retention.

Description: Historically low interest rates, historically high equity market volatility and ever increasing life spans have made pension funding a hot topic. Financing the lifestyles of the superannuated through steadily improving investment performance is no longer a given. Market realities and stricter regulatory funding requirements are forcing plan sponsors to reduce overly optimistic assumptions about how well their investments will perform and increase assumptions about how long they will have to last. A growing number of well-known corporations are looking for help in trying to make the math work. This article discusses the opportunities for all who want to take on longevity risk.