Description: "Over the past few years, there have been significant changes in the indexed and variable universal life insurance market. These changes have been driven by a variety of factors, including advancements in technology, changes in consumer preferences and shifts in the regulatory environment. Join us as we discuss some of the most important recent changes in the universal life insurance market, specifically: - Advances in underwriting: With the help of big data analytics and artificial intelligence, underwriting has become more efficient with minimal loss in accuracy. - Changes in product design and evolving markets: Over the past few years, there have been several notable product trends. Hear panelists discuss some shared aspects of these product launches and updates, spanning both retail and institutional markets. - The impact of changing interest rates: Many insurance companies have had to adjust their pricing and product offerings in response to the dynamic economic environment. Panelists will discuss how interest rates and volatility have impacted the universal life market and what insurers are doing to adapt and prepare for further changes. - Regulatory changes: Finally, our conversation will turn toward some of the most important recent regulatory changes that have impacted the universal life insurance market, including revisions to Actuarial Guideline 49A (AG49A), Long Duration Targeting Improvement (LDTI) accounting standards and other regulatory initiatives. Learning Outcome: You will better understand the trends and drivers of product changes in this core life insurance market. TRACK: Pricing/ Product Development (Underwriting, ULSG, Etc.)"

Description: Where once an insurer's chief investment officer (CIO) reigned supreme over assets-aided and sometimes hindered by the involvement of a chief risk officer (CRO)-these days managing portfolio risk and return seems to be an altogether more complex affair. No less of this complexity has come from the expansion by insurers into illiquid assets in the last decade. Moving away from traditional assets has raised scrutiny of liquidity risk management, but how do insurers tackle this? In a world 'brimming with large and growing portfolio allocations to illiquid private assets,' liquidity management concerns are distinct from a typical CRO's portfolio or asset risk orientation. There's a need to look at all aspects of a fund's liquidity demands and sources, such as top-down asset allocation, bottom-up private market deal-making activities, and internal and external operations. A dedicated liquidity management function should also be able to identify both explicit and potential liquidity demands and sources and, in particular, stay in touch with market movements and the regulatory environment. It should identify, evaluate and keep at-the-ready possible external liquidity facilities-for example, the secondary market for private equity stakes, a collateralized portfolio liquidity line, a repurchase agreement or a futures program. A high-quality liquidity management team can also identify when a fund has too much liquidity, the cost of being overly cautious and how to put excess liquidity to work.

Description: Address issues in value-based contract accounting from an actuarial perspective. In Medicare and ACA business, what issues does risk adjustment present to value-based contract accounting? In Medicare, what issues do Part D present in value-based contract accounting and what are possible solutions? What are the issues in the use of provider stop loss in value-based contract accounting? Are there issues in the timeliness of claims in value-based contract accounting? Are we giving providers enough information for them to manage their population? How do we deal with deficit accounts? What are the pros and cons of capitation, gainshare, and full risk in value-based accounting?

Description: The world of climate risk disclosures has seen dizzying levels of change in the last few years. In 2023, many regulators have publicly issued guidance on what insurance companies and other FIs should look to disclose. So what are we seeing in these disclosures and how do we use this information? Join our panel of experts to learn about the evolution of U.S. life insurance industry's climate disclosures and how insurers of all sizes and complexities are responding to NAIC's requirements.

Description: There exists profound health and access disparities among people from different demographics and socioeconomic backgrounds. Health equity is now a central policy directive for the U.S. government and CMS. Speakers representing policy, health care delivery and actuarial spaces will help you discover what health equity policy directions may look like, the challenges health care providers are facing and how actuaries can contribute to the effort in bridging the health equity divides.

Description: Long Duration Targeting Improvement's (LDTI's) roll-forward disclosure requirements include line items for the impact of actual variances from expected experience (A/E) for both net premiums and benefits. These aggregate A/E amounts provide some insight into how actual experience is emerging relative to expectations, but they do not provide insight into either the drivers of the deviations or their significance.

Description: Struggling to build a diverse and representative team? In this session, listen in on a discussion about best practices to consider when building a diverse team, how to set DEI goals and track them to ensure you are empowering diversity in how your teams deliver work.

Description: The frequent use and complexity of today's actuarial projection models has increased the importance of having efficient models. Model optimization can reduce both cloud costs and overall end-to-end clock times, thereby allowing companies to do more with less such as reducing close times, increasing controls, enhancing analysis, doing more complicated calculations, and/or improving employee workloads during the close. From design and data to execution and audit, come explore techniques that can be applied throughout the actuarial modeling process to optimize actuarial models for improved run-time, accuracy, and reliability. There will be a focus on techniques that don't rely on model compression. Topics covered include model design pitfalls, data handling, improving convergence on asset-liability projections, strategies for interacting with the cloud, and other tips for optimizing actuarial models.

Description: The COVID-19 pandemic has had an impact on all aspects of daily life and its impact extends to how disability incidence may play out in the future. Product profitability will be shaped by how morbidity patterns, interest rate levels and other key drivers will play out into the future. In this session, our panel will discuss COVID’s impact on IDI morbidity experience as observed over the past 18 months, offer comparisons and insights in light of other insurance lines of business, and share emerging information on the on-going effects of Long COVID. Highlights will also include how regional differences and implications for insurers as the industry moves further into the COVID vaccine era.

Description: This session brings to life the popular series entitled 'What Would You Do?' in Leadership & Development's section newsletter The Stepping Stone. As in the newsletter, participants will be posed with a real-life situation and must answer the question 'What would you do?' Situations can vary (e.g. pricing/product focused, valuation focused, professionalism, etc.) with all including a leadership/softskills slant. Participants will be expected to provide their perspectives on the situation and what they believe will work most effectively.