Description: Feature article discussing how technology is affecting the reinsurance business.

Description: We look in this article at the challenges which life insurance companies operating in a low interest environment have to face.

Description: Haven’t we all been watching for the next big financing transaction and wondering whether it will be done by a reinsurer or an insurer? Also will it support XXX reserve redundancies or will the market have finally “cracked the code” for the financing of AXXX reserves?

Description: The financial sector should provide financial security and allocate capital well. As its preeminent professionals actuaries have particular responsibilities.

Description: This paper aims to help financial and insurance practitioners better recognize, assess, and respond to large scale, large impact, rare events (LSLIRE’s) which are occurrences currently often wrongly labeled as being unpredictable black swans. A black swan, as Nassim Taleb defines it in his popular book, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, Random House & Penguin (2007-2010 2nd. Ed.) is 1) an outlier event, which 2) carries extreme impact, and 3) “makes us concoct explanations for its occurrence after the fact.” Elsewhere, Taleb says it is unpredictable, which is why people concoct explanations. Other people use the term in many and various ways, to enfold events missed by most people because they are rare, missed by computer models and/or experts, and to include events they simply seem personally to have misunderstood. The paper also discusses building better ways to assess such events’ background characteristics, emergence dynamics, logics, and other foreseeable attributes. A secondary focus is educating practitioners to better respond - whether to limit damage or to take advantage of - the opportunities that arise from what others are likely to miss or misjudge during and after the emergence of LSLIRE (AKA black swan) events.

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: Accelerated underwriting programs continue to evolve at a rapid pace. Triage systems have become a key element in many of the newer accelerated underwriting programs in the market. Depending on the criteria used at the triage point, these programs can have residual effects on class prevalence and mortality which in turn affect the profitability of these programs. In this article we will explore some potential impacts on mortality and prevalence within these programs.

Description: Exploring challenges facing the actuarial profession as a whole in the context of developments in recent years

Description: Feature article discussing the impact of health care reform on the direct insurance market and the reinsurance market.

Description: Actuaries often have to derive a mortality basis from the experience data of a portfolio. The most common application is for risk management, such as the annual valuation. However, it is also required for pricing block transfers, such as longevity swaps, reinsurance treaties and bulk annuities. In each case it is useful to know two things: (i) what uncertainty surrounds the mortality basis, and (ii) what financial impact that uncertainty has. Both of these questions come under the heading of mis-estimation risk, which is the subject of this article.