Description: A jurisdiction’s regulatory regime can make some insurance products capital intensive to write. This can increase incentives for insurers to enter into risk transfer arrangements, such as reinsurance, to support their business and growth objectives.

Description: This presentation presents a decumulation strategy during retirement with the purchase of deferred annuities.

Description: This article is a discussion about the trends and changes affecting the life insurance industry by impacting product growth. Read how today's ideas can become tomorrow's successes.

Description: Accounting Standards Update (ASU) 2018-12, commonly referred to as long duration targeted improvements (LDTI), is the most significant GAAP accounting change impacting the life insurance industry in the past 40 years. This article discusses the impact of LDTI on variable annuities (VA) and fixed indexed annuities (FIA) from a product development and in-force management angle. Detailed discussion topics include hedging and ALM, product strategy and development, and pricing. LDTI will cause many VA and FIA writers to re-evaluate their hedging and asset liability management (ALM) strategy following the move to fair value accounting under the new MRB requirement. Stakeholder appetite for accounting volatility and resulting changes to hedging and ALM may trigger changes in product mix and designs. In addition to updating pricing infrastructure to handle the new requirements, pricing actuaries will need to produce analyses to educate stakeholders on the risks and pricing implications of any changes to designs, hedging and ALM.

Description: Examines the trends affecting the distribution system for the industry's products, and the regulatory and tax environment in which life companies operate. Also looks briefly at the state of competition in the industry.

Description: This article examines the changes in U.S. regulatory reserve and risk-based capital requirements that will significantly impact the insurance industry and practicing actuaries. It summarizes activity related to principles-based reserves and risk-based capital initiatives during 2005.

Description: This is the second article in a four–part series. In this article, the industry's products are examined.

Description: Outlines a generic business model for a life insurance company and concludes with thoughts on future trends and prospects.

Description: Recently the interest rates have been slowly trending up from the lowest point in August 2020. The focus of this article is on current market trends for long-duration products —including life insurance, annuities, and long-term care insurance —following an extended period of low interest rates, and lessons carriers can learn from similar historical periods of rising interest rates. Innovative and flexible product features will continue to be essential, as the current interest trend may not substantially increase insurers’ portfolio rates. When designing or modifying product features, insurers should consider profitability in a wide breadth of interest rate scenarios and be particularly mindful of the impact that crediting rates and asset durations will have on earnings.

Description: Owners of nonqualified annuity contracts, individuals under qualified retirement plans, and annuity issuers are left without any published guidance on when annuity payments can be used to satisfy the SEPP [Substantially Equal Periodic Payments] exceptions to the 10 percent penalty tax under sections 72q2D and 72t2Aiv. This article discusses that problem. The insurance industry requested guidance on this issue.8