Description: Mortality Credibility and its use within VM-20.

Description: Section 818c of the Life Insurance Company Income Tax Act of 1959 provides, for companies holding other than net level premium reserves, a choice of two methods: exact revaluation or approximate revaluation to this basis. This paper discusses the impact of the choice on the level of a company's tax reserves. A discussion paper follows.

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: The paper explores developments through 2006 in the application of market-consistent concepts to the measurement of fair values of liabilities for financial reporting purposes. A set of criteria is presented that should be useful in the evaluation of proposed fair value measurement approaches where inputs based on prices observed in an active market with reliable transaction prices are not available. Based on these criteria, one approach is examined that might serve as a basis for the fair value measurement of the liability of life insurance contracts and other financial instruments issued by insurers.

Description: Under non-Aristotelian logic, there are multiple values, or shades of gray. Indeed, there may even be unexpected results from logical combinations, like “both” and “neither.” This article discusses how this insight should be applied to the current debate between formula-driven reserves with limited assumption flexibility and the reserve principles approach. For reserve standards, we do need both actuarial judgment grounded in reserving principles and restrictive formula methods or safe harbors.

Description: General discussion session which included the following topics: A. Non-medical limits B. Deficiency reserves for individual life insurance

Description: Illustrates key differences, in earnings for a segment of term insurance, between current GAAP standards and GAAP targeted improvements (based on tentative board decisions preceding the release of an exposure draft).

Description: Continues the look from previous articles at unlocking of traditional contract valuation assumptions, this time examining the effects of lapses.

Description: Presents a practical solution to some of the distortion caused by a typical application of the retrospective assumption update (unlocking) method.

Description: Continued look at unlocking of traditional contract valuation assumptions, this time examining the frequency of true up for actual experience.