Description: This is a research project discussing on the needs and opportunities of the older age market to be used in the development and distribution of products that will protect future retirees from financial risk.

Description: The purpose of this paper is to suggest an improved method of future mortality improvement approximation, using the a-1949 Table as the basic table. Comparisons are shown between this method and other methods for annuitants.

Description: This paper is a literature review of available papers, publications, articles, and presentations on the topic of longevity risk.

Description: This paper discusses the calculation of minimum statutory non-forfeiture values for annuity contracts with stipulated annual payments under which contractual values are based on the 1937 Standard Annuity Table.

Description: This report was prepared to provide an overview of Registered Index-Linked Annuities for use in the educational curriculum of the Society of Actuaries. It presents general principles and highlights major differences from other types of deferred annuities offered by life insurance companies in the United States.

Description: This paper presents a relatively simple method for calculating approximate annuity values on a mortality basis that provides for future improvements in mortality. From Transactions of Society of Actuaries 1950, Vol. 2, No. 3.

Description: Initiated by the Financial Reporting Section, this paper explores rising interest rates. Following this path, the paper will look at implications of interest rate changes for the life insurance industry, current stress testing practices, and how a risk manager can proactively prepare for an uncertain future. A paper published in 2014 focused on why rates could stay low, and some aspects of this paper are similar (e.g., description of insurance products). This paper also uses a sample model office to help practitioners look at their own exposures. It includes typical interest-sensitive insurance products and how they might perform across various scenarios, as well as a survey to establish current practices for how insurers are testing interest rate risk currently.

Description: This report utilizes a literature review, company survey, company interviews and/or other methods to catalog a listing of common living benefit riders. It was sponsored by the Product Development and Reinsurance Sections along with the Committee on Life Insurance Research. This paper has several goals in relation to each living benefit rider type: to define various living benefit riders, to provide historical sales data and general filing requirements, to explore how underwriting and administration is handled, and to comment briefly on the overall level of claims activity experienced thus far compared to pricing expectations. In addition, it includes a review of the direct and reinsurance pricing implications of the riders to the extent they impact policyholder optionality and base plan financial characteristics. This paper includes perspectives developed through the experience of the authors, and includes executive summaries of a survey conducted by the SOA and Milliman of 34 direct writers, and interviews that Milliman conducted with 8 reinsurers.

Description: At retirement, people face a choice between annuitization and self-management of liquid wealth [also called self-annuitization]. A common belief is that annuitization provides longevity insurance at the cost of liquidity. This paper argues that the desire for liquidity is actually driven by bequest motives and estate value should be the measure on the liquidity of a given strategy. The authors demonstrate that self-annuitization give more estate within a critical duration [before life expectancy] while annuitization creates more estate after that. In their second result, they compute the expected ending estate at death under these two strategies and find that, on average, annuitization creates more estate than self-annuitization under reasonable assumptions. They conclude that, as long as the same fund is being used for these two strategies, annuitization and self-annuitization just create different patterns of estates over time. However, annuitization is usually better than self-annuitization for estate creation and liquidity, on average. This is somewhat counter-intuitive to popular belief because payout annuities without a certain period do not have cash surrender values. The creation of the balance stream and the results shown in this paper have important implications on new product and marketing strategies for payout annuities.

Description: The dependent relationship between two lives is readily analyzed within the context of probability theory. This paper presents useful relationships between certain actuarial and probability functions and then explores measures of dependence. From Transactions of Society of Actuaries 1986, Vol. 38.