Description: Presented at May 2000 Spring Meeting. Discusses common problems in creating a successful merger - such as not incorporating community support, and not achieving economies of scale - and how to avoid them.

Description: From a session 11 PD at a meeting of the Society of Actuaries held in San Diego, CA, June 22-23, 2000 This discussion presents an introduction to credit derivatives. From Record of Society of Actuaries, Volume 26, No. 1.

Description: 1999 SOA Annual Meeting, San Francisco. This panel expanded on earlier research to examine the potential costs of long-term guarantees, transfer risk modeling techniques, and the formulation of practical strategies to manage investment accumulation products.

Description: Panelists at this session of the SOA 2003 Washington, DC Spring Meeting discuss how changes in interest rates affect the assets and liabilities of a life insurance company and what a company can do to prepare. This session examines historical trends in interest rates and how companies have reacted to both sudden and gradual changes.

Description: 2004 SOA Spring Meeting, Anaheim, CA. This panel discussed asset class/equity sector historical returns demonstrating the need for diversification risk management at the portfolio level and models and assumptions available at investment firms for retirement and education planning.

Description: Presented at May 1996 Spring Meeting. The recent development of a finance track in the Fellowship syllabus allows the student to acquire expertise in financial market, asset valuation, and investment strategies. Panelists discuss actuarial work assignments undertaken by finance actuaries in life insurance companies.

Description: This presentation considers the pricing of European derivatives in a Black-Scholes model with stochastic volatility. The presentation shows how Parseval’s theorem may be used to express those prices as Fourier integrals. This is a significant improvement over Monte Carlo simulation in many cases. The main ingredient in this presentation's method is the Laplace transform of the ordinary [constant volatility] price of a put or call in the Black-Scholes model, where the transform is taken with respect to maturity [T]. The presentation derives these formulas and then applies them to the case where volatility is modelled as a Markov chain in continuous time, the so-called 'Markov regime switching model'. This model has been used previously in stochastic volatility modelling, but mostly with only N=2 states. The presentation shows how to use N=3 states without difficulty, and how larger number of states can be handled. Numerical illustrations are given, including the volatility smile in a three-state model.

Description: From a session at a meeting of the Society of Actuaries held in San Diego, CA, June 22-23, 2000 Topics in this discussion include: 1 An overview of the municipal reinvestment market—size, current players, and historical development, 2 A comparison of muni-guaranteed investment contracts to stable value guaranteed investment contacts 3 Types of funds and contracts issued in this market, including contract provisions and risks 4 Roles that life insurers currently play in this market and 5 Use of structured companies or parent-supported subsidiaries.

Description: Institutional investors such as pension plans and insurance companies have enjoyed strong equity returns for a length of time with few historical precedents. Nearly a decade after the end of the financial crisis, strategies to provide downside protection remain expensive and the performance of traditional risk-managed funds has disappointed investors.

Description: Panelists discuss the role of an investment actuary. Focus is on the process the investment actuary uses in the job, and on working with the perspectives of the investment professionals and the product actuaries with whom the investment actuary works. From the 2002 Record of Society of Actuaries, Volume 28, No. 3. Session 5PD of the Boston Annual Meeting.