Description: The external actuary must balance the goals of the company with a realistic assessment of the chances of achieving them, uncovering hidden value while scaling back on aggressive targets to achieve a balanced, defensible end product with buy-in from the seller's team. From Actuarial Considerations in Insurance Mergers and Acquisitions, M-FI03-1.

Description: Discussion of Human capital and its implicit asset and liability cash flows how insurance companies could help measure and provide products to help match up the timing of those cash flows. From Asset-Liability Integration, M-FI02-1.

Description: Management's goal is to continuously optimize the economic value of the firm, subject to regulatory constraints, with the use of financial valuation of the firm’s balance sheet. Both the assets and liabilities can be perceived as derivative securities. This chapter discusses a variety of financial economics issues with this common theme. From Asset-Liability Integration, M-FI02-1.

Description: This paper demonstrates that cash balance plans should invest all of their assets in taxable fixed-income securities and credit employee account balances with the total return on an equity index. From Cash Balance Symposium Monograph, M-RS02-3.

Description: This paper discusses the role of gradual retirement in introducing flexibility into the range of choices between work and retirement.

Description: Group life insurance often represents an important component of the typical employee benefit package. The purpose of the present paper is to explore some aspects of different benefit schedules. In this paper, a method is suggested for analysing group life insurance benefit schedules with respect to certain criteria. The procedure is illustrated by means of simple numerical examples.

Description: This paper suggests that individual decisions to retire are based on personal resource allocations, institutional influences, and social standards. The paper then attempts to create a decision-making framework in which to accommodate this range of influences. From Retirement Needs Framework, M-RS00-1.

Description: This paper considers the question of how the adjustment mechanisms described for the Swedish and German social security systems might be incorporated into private sector DB plans of the following types: multi-employer and single employer.

Description: This paper talks about the risks of defined benefit and defined contribution plans.

Description: This is a listing of the contributors for The Old-Age Crisis - Actuarial Opportunities: The 1996 Bowles Symposium.