Description: This article presents a case study that examines the implication of using real-world interest rate scenario generators with a block of fixed deferred annuities. We contrast cash flow testing results based on New York 7 deterministic scenarios to stochastic scenarios generated with the Academy Interest Rate Generator , as well as an alternative economic scenario generator designed explicitly to capture the risk of a persistently low interest rate environment and the transition to a rising interest rate environment.

Description: discussion of the ongoing developments in reserving and risk-based capital RBC requirements for variable annuities including stochastic scenario projections

Description: Results of an industry survey on life insurance companies' efforts to implement the recently adopted Life Risk-Based Capital Phase II Instructions, which include new requirements for variable annuity contracts. Adopted by the NAIC on October 14, 2005, the new requirements are effective for year-end 2005. Also discusses a summary of the requirements set forth in the instructions.

Description: This paper illustrates a current approach to capital allocation, referred to herein as Tail Contribution Analysis TCA, using it to evaluate the impact of changes in an insurer’s operations by allocating capital to individual lines of business. It then highlights a common problem in the implementation of the procedure arising from reserve volatility and briefly notes the failure of the methodology to account for a firm’s changing levels of risk under various strategies. Finally, it introduces an alternative method for analyzing business segments and strategies called Economic Profit Analysis EPA. We will discuss EPA’s key feature, “volatility replication,” an intuitively appealing process of building investor expectations and capital market information into the risk-and-return measurements used to evaluate strategic decisions. Finally, we will illustrate the benefit of using EPA in overcoming the problems of TCA and thereby providing concise reliable information for business decision making.

Description: Discussion of how to obtain tight upper and lower bounds on E[hX] for a given function h, and a random variable X with three known moments.

Description: Presented at August 2011 Actuarial Research Conference. Summarizes the Heston model, discusses hedging equity indexed annuities, and provides numerical results of the Black-Scholes and Heston hedging strategies.

Description: The April 2016 Issue of The Modeling Platform

Description: In physics and engineering education, Fermi problems require solutions based on good approximate calculations with little or no actual data, involving making justified guesses and deducing bounds without using sophisticated tools. The idea of Fermi problems are of particular relevance to today's actuaries, as pricing, reserving, and financial reporting involve more and more complex stochastic components. The paper discusses some approximate solutions developed in academia in the spirit of Fermi problems.

Description: Presentation at the 41st Actuarial Research Conference held on August 10-12, 2006 in Montreal, QC. This paper considers the problem of extending regime-switching models for asset returns to the situation with multiple asset markets. The conditional tail expectation CTE is highly sensitive to the assumed dependence structure between the regime models for the different markets. A Monte Carlo simulation is used to illustrate the cost of misspecification. The authors find that the model most commonly used by practitioners is worse than all of the alternatives that they investigate.