Description: Presented at May 2002 Spring Meeting. Discusses emerging trends worldwide in financial reporting, management, FASB and how to look at a performance management tool.

Description: Panelists illustrate the accounting outcomes of proposed revisions to accounting requirements for insurance and annuity products and discuss potential ramifications. Also discussed are potential implementation issues. From the 2002 Record of Society of Actuaries, Volume 28, No. 3. Session 126CS of the Boston Annual Meeting.

Description: Panelists at this session of the 2001 Valuation Actuary Symposium discuss recent developments in the area of fair-value financial reporting including recent FASB and IASB developments, international accounting standards, issues yet to be resolved and different approaches to valuing liabilities.

Description: Risk management techniques such as stress testing and setting capital targets are fairly well established for life insurers; however, the implementation of these techniques can vary considerably. A fundamental question is how to manage multiple valuation perspectives, and the list of possibilities keeps growing. Companies can potentially consider some or all of the following: U.S. reporting measures (Stat, GAAP), internal measures (EV, VNB, economic capital), international reporting measures (IFRS), rating agency models or other developing standards (ICS, NAIC group capital). This session will begin with a quick overview of the defining characteristics of different valuation frameworks. We will then provide more focused and practical considerations for managing risk and capital under different frameworks, using specific examples to highlight key trade offs.

Description: Article explores two very different approaches that are currently being considered for use in projecting credited rates on interest sensitive products and show how they can be reconciled with one another.

Description: U.K. life insurers writing participating business have, since the end of 2004, been required by their regulator, the Financial Services Authority FSA, to value their assets and liabilities on a market-consistent basis. The purpose of this paper is to explain the new valuation approach based on market-consistent values and its rationale set out the issues faced by life insurers in implementing the new regime and explain how these issues have been addressed by insurers.

Description: This article addresses the key capital and risk management issues immediately confronting the industry.

Description: The NAIC is working with state insurance departments to replace the existing rules-based valuation laws with principle-based valuation laws. On the GAAP front, both the International Accounting Standards Board, which sets GAAP accounting guidance for many countries outside the United States, and the Financial Accounting Standards Board, which promulgates GAAP guidance in the United States, are moving toward a “current estimate” standard of valuation, which often results in a fair value or similar measurement basis. This article reviews the IASB’s discussion paper on insurance valuation and the American Academy of Actuaries’ response to it.

Description: Article examines some of the shortcomings of Market Consistent Embedded Value reporting as it is currently constructed—particularly in periods of heightened volatility—and recommends some possible improvements that the CFO Forum is likely to consider.

Description: Discusses the newly adopted actuarial guideline for variable annuity reserving which is principles-based. It requires the calculation of both, a standard deterministic scenario reserve and a stochastic reserve - of which the larger of the two is used. This article discusses why for some companies the deterministic reserves dominate and for others the stochastic one does.