Description: The Social Security file and suspend and restricted application claiming strategies have received a great deal of attention in the past few years as allowing individuals to increase their Social Security benefits. The Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015 made significant changes to these strategies. This article reviews those strategies and then discusses the impact of the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015 changes on those strategies.

Description: A basic principle of marketing suggests that using the preferred medium a consumer knows and trusts will have a direct impact on the way they make purchases and how one could—and should—sell to and interact with them.

Description: A discussion on a study that unveils significant findings among mass-market consumers and their attitudes about retirement.

Description: I’d like to start a movement to banish the term “life expectancy” from the retirement planning lexicon. It is one of the most abused and dangerously misunderstood concepts in retirement planning.

Description: A 2015 Society of Actuaries Report (co-sponsored by the Reinsurance Section, Product Development Section, and Committee on Life Insurance Research) entitled “Life and Annuity Living Benefit Riders: Considerations for Insurers and Reinsurers,” is available on the Society of Actuaries website (www.soa.org). It covers a wide range of living benefit riders with medically-related triggers on life or annuity products. This article is largely derived from that report, covering several of those riders. In order to add to the marketing implications of these plans, Claude Thau, in his capacity as President of Thau, Inc. has provided additional commentary from the perspective of a marketer who is active in this field.

Description: The article is a aggregations of perspectives on whether an FSA should also pursue their MBA.

Description: Innovation has become a fashionable concept, but what does it really mean? Are the concepts of innovation and invention synonyms? Is innovation a good thing? If so, why so many oppose it? If we want to become innovators, what considerations should be kept in mind? Are there examples of innovative thought in the actuarial field? If so, can you think of some of them? If you want answers to these questions please read Jay Jaffe’s article, Becoming a More Effective Innovator. Innovation is a big idea in the business education, so much so that many MBA programs are including courses on the subject, so much so that, as we know, our Section is called Entrepreneurial & Innovation.

Description: Editor's column for the September 2016 issue of NewsDirect.

Description: A conversation around funding and growing your business.

Description: I remember in my college years being forced to take marketing classes because the actuarial science major was attained through the business school at my university.