Description: The objective of this paper from the Transactions of Society of Actuaries 1964, Vol. 16, Pt. 1, No. 44 AB, is to illustrate some of the alternative approaches to making approximate probability statements about the present value of life annuities assuming a specified distribution of the random variable, time until death, and a fixed interest rate.

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: This research report on the ability to influence annuity purchases found the following contrast: • Pre-retirees’ intentions to buy a life income annuity appear to be impacted by the interventions tested in this research. There were stronger effects when pre-retirees were provided with basic information, such as life expectancy, and anecdotal evidence. • Retirees’ annuity purchase intentions do not appear to be impacted by the interventions used in the study.

Description: Non-guaranteed elements are parameters of life insurance and annuity polices that are not fixed when the policy is issued but may be changed from time to time by the insurance company.

Description: This is a brief discussion on the paper by Eugene A. Rasor and T. N. E. Greville titled, 'Complete Annuities', which addressed the calculation of a payout life annuity factor. The commentary notes that the complete annuity is actually a refund annuity, where a proportional share of the final payment made say a premium payment is refunded as of date of death.

Description: This paper sets out the basic principles of federal income taxation of annuity payments, together with the general rules for determining which of two possible methods must be used and the general formulas to be used. From Transactions of Society of Actuaries 1968, Vol. 20, Pt. 1, No. 58.

Description: Development of a formula for the continuous annuity ax:n| in terms of the Makeham parameters A, B, and c, and the force of interest. Followed by several discussion papers submitted

Description: This paper focuses on the equity unit annuity popularly termed the variable annuity. Followed by several discussion papers submitted

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: The Joint Risk Management Section is trying to develop better estimates of policyholder behavior in the tail [PBITT]. The mission of the PBITT working group is to examine and ultimately give guidance to actuaries on how to set policyholder assumptions in extreme scenarios. As part of its work, the PBITT working group issued its sixth survey to gather the range of assumptions actuaries use in pricing, reserving, and risk management of minimum guarantees on Variable Annuity products, such as death benefits, income benefits, withdrawal benefits and maturity benefits. This document contains the results of that survey.