Description: This article focusses on the results of a June 2020 survey by the Leadership and Development Section of the SOA on working remotely as an actuary. The article presents the questions and responses of the survey, and commentary on how to successfully navigate the remote work environment as an actuary - from the perspective of both a current organizational leader, and as a future organizational leader.

Description: This article describes how to externalize code of Moody's Axis platform to Visual Studio, so that all the actuarial calculation code run through corporate DevOps pipeline. This article gives specific examples of the author has used in his job to accomplish automated model governance.

Description: There are early indications of a six year cycle in ACA markets reminiscent of the traditional underwriting cycle.

Description: This is the first in a series of articles about accounting for reinsurance under GAAP Targeted Improvements to the Accounting for Long-Duration Contracts (LDTI). It provides an introduction to the topic, giving an overview of what has and hasn't changed. Changes include a few that directly address reinsurance and others that indirectly result from changes to direct accounting and the existing ties between reinsurance and direct accounting.

Description: This article speculates on the presence and magnitude of the benefits attributable to regular rebalancing of one's investment portfolio. It surveys the extant literature, discusses certain implications, and presents conclusions.

Description: Overview of the seven trends affecting the Actuarial profession .

Description: Actuaries can empower their understanding of policyholder behavior with third party data. Modeling policyholder behavior should start from developing knowledge of who they are, instead of actuaries assuming what a rational behavior should be.

Description: This article will be focused on maximizing the reuse of code using features available within Moody’s Axis specifically targeted at using Formula Link.

Description: The COVID-19 pandemic has not simply changed the way we live. It has caused most of us—whether we want to or not—to reassess the way we think and feel about our world. Most in the general public have been looking to political and medical leaders to better understand the implications to health and wealth. Likewise, we as actuaries look to business leaders and key volunteers for their insights into the impact on our profession. We recently conducted a series of interviews with such leaders in the Canadian actuarial profession. This article addresses their insights into the evolving set of skills we need in this rapidly changing world.

Description: What does leadership look like within the actuarial industry, what are some variables, and what practical advice can we learn?

Description: Read the June 2020 issue of The Stepping Stone published by the Leadership & Development Section. Newsletters provide practical information for the working actuary, articles on trends that impact sections and news about section activities.

Description: This article demonstrates how to implement DevOps for data using Moody's Axis. This was described as Model as Data (MAD). It described how extract turn-around documents from the model so they could be loaded back into the model. This feature allows continuous integration, continuous deployment and continuous testing of the model, which are important concepts in DevOps. This will allow the actuaries to speed up the model development cycle.

Description: This paper analyzes climate change's impact on corn yield and insurance claims in Southern Minnesota through an analysis of how temperature and precipitation are expected to change over the next 30 years.

Description: The article describes the insurance industry's preparation for pandemic events and the public finance response.

Description: This article introduces a non-traditional type of economic scenario generator that relies on dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) models are complex macroeconomics models and have been increasingly popular in central banks for analyzing monetary policies.

Description: Targeted Improvements provides a strong impetus for commitment by management to develop and maintain a set of appropriate assumptions. As even the best of assumptions will take time to season, the sooner the improvements in assumptions are made, the quicker the goal of stabilized earnings can be realized.

Description: The SOA and Plug and Play relationship will allow InsurTech start-ups to validate their technology and modeling processes with actuaries. The strategic partnership with Plug and Play demonstrates the SOA’s commitment to providing its members with dynamic learning experiences, rewarding volunteer opportunities, and collaborative events where they can learn from the experiences and ideas of peers around the world.

Description: Read about the Demographic Change in Mexico - An Opportunity and Challenge for the Insurance Industry.

Description: There is widespread acknowledgement in the insurance industry that cyber risk remains an untamed and seemingly ever-growing beast. It is also unique in the family of risk exposures faced by insurers in that it is both an emerging risk and an emerged risk. What are companies doing to keep on top of this risk? What are actuaries doing to contribute to cyber risk management, and what can we learn from other industries and disciplines?

Description: A feature article discussing the financial opportunities of investing in gold.

Description: The article shared results from a survey conducted in May of best-estimate VA assumptions as of year-end 2018. Specifically, the discussion focused on lapse, utilization and separate account return assumptions. The results show that a considerable range of practice across assumptions used by the industry for variable annuities. There is a propensity to use complex assumptions to better match the underlying complexity in the products with the behavior expected from policyholders in a dynamic and volatile economic environment.

Description: Read the December 2019 issue of The Financial Reporter published by the Financial Reporting Section. Newsletters provide practical information for the working actuary, articles on trends that impact sections and news about section activities.

Description: Python is the leading programming language for data science. Python programming is one skill that actuaries should acquire. It facilitates analytic work, and the available visualization tools help to communicate ideas. In this article, I use a traditional actuarial problem, mortality modeling, as an example.

Description: Article describes how to write effective model documentation

Description: This article is the first installment of a three-part series that aims to provide an overview of ESGs and will focus on the general motivation for stochastic modeling, its advantages and its limitations. Future articles will further break down the key factors of ESGs and the application of these factors to better understand the Academy Interest Rate Generator (AIRG).

Description: Read the Q&A with an Experienced Insurance Professional New to Long-Term Care: An Interview with Sean Pena.

Description: Column from the SOA staff actuary for the Long-Term Care Section.

Description: An interview of Matthew Bond focusing on pension liabilities.

Description: Feature article describing a framework for the computation of credit capital requirements under the constant position paradigm, taking into account recovery rates.

Description: Feature article discussing the number of challenges associated with ASU 2018-12 related to the measurement of market risk benefits.

Description: The article highlights the key components of the PBR resource manual and analyze its implications for companies' assumption management practice.

Description: Feature article discussing how the insurance industry can become more data driven.

Description: This article lays conceptual foundations associated with projecting investment-related discretionary elements of various life insurance and annuity products. It outlines potential implementation approaches that may be appropriate when calculations are performed in a risk-neutral setting. The article concludes that crediting rates in risk-neutral models can be projected as in real-world models, except that the modeled provision for expected credit losses should be modified to equal real-world expected losses initially, but over the projection reflect management’s evolving expectation, moving ultimately to risk neutral expected losses.

Description: The Future of Insurance is described, as seen by some heads of start-up FinTech companies.

Description: An interview with Tony Laudato, VP, Partnership Solutions for Hannover Re US, discussing the benefits of digital distribution.

Description: The collective investment in transforming the life insurance proposition exceeds anything seen in the last thirty years — a working lifetime. As one would expect, reinsurers are playing a major role. The past five years have seen global reinsurers raise the bar on client experience to new levels, while also investing, expanding and re-organizing to support the transformation of the primary insurance industry, and in so doing also their own.

Description: Feature article discussing the usefulness of Lorenz and Lift curves.

Description: There is a growing amount of “off-balance sheet” talent in the US and Global workforce. This spans from consultants and contractors, to gig workers and the crowd (both curated crowd and open crowd). One such example is Uber and Lyft workers. Insurance companies and the Actuarial profession have started to experiment with platforms such as Kaggle and this will continue to grow and evolve. This article explores these new sources of talent for companies, the implications to the actuarial function, benefits and challenges of the evolving workforce.

Description: Insight on SOA research.

Description: Summary of recent surveys to life actuaries regarding assumptions surrounding policyholder behavior in the tail for universal life with secondary guarantees and minimum guarantees on variable annuities. This information is intended to examine and ultimately give guidance to actuaries on how to set policyholder assumptions in extreme scenarios.

Description: As sponsored by the Canadian Institute of Actuaries (CIA), Casualty Actuarial Society (CAS), and Society of Actuaries (SOA), the study looks at causes of insolvency and decisions made by management, regulators, and policyholders over the life cycle of the insolvency. Further, this study considers ways the profession can be equipped to prevent or mitigate future insolvencies. In addition to directly benefitting the profession, the work is also intended to assist other insurance industry practitioners in understanding the complexities of insurance company solvency and the benefit of keeping the actuarial profession in the forefront of company management, operations, and regulatory communication

Description: A new wave of life insurance buyers is finally here - but are we ready? In this article, Richard De Sousa shares proprietary research about the Millenial generation, its beliefs related to life insurance, and its preferences when it comes to learning about, purchasing, and engaging with life insurance products, advisors and companies. Also explored is the foundational role that technology and wellness play in driving the kind of experience that will attract millenial buyers. After reading this article, you will better understand the characteristics of this new generation as well as the innovative companies that are targeting them, and learn about different and novel ways to better engage with customers and enhance the value of your own products and services.

Description: Read the April 2019 issue of CompAct, published by the Technology Section of the Society of Actuaries.

Description: Global megatrends in technology are disrupting the life insurance industry.

Description: Applying Predictive Analytics for Insurance Assumptions Setting: high level principles.

Description: This article discusses important implications of the upcoming Long-Duration Targeted Improvements (LDTI) accounting change for the modeling actuary. We discuss the modeling implications of new GAAP standards for Market Risk Benefit (MRB), including identification of MRBs, implementation of fair valuation in actuarial systems and retroactive determination of at-issue valuation inputs for transition. We also examine the modeling implications of the other aspects of the accounting change, including Liability for Future Policy Benefit (LFPB), Deferred Acquisition Cost (DAC), and other transition and disclosure requirements

Description: Summary of the modeling-related sessions from some of the major 2018 Society of Actuaries (SOA) meetings: Life & Annuity Symposium, Health Meeting and the Valuation Actuary Symposium.

Description: A description of KPMG's survey findings of 20 companies about principle-based reserving implementation.

Description: Part II of a two-part series discussing individual market evolution from before the ACA through President Trump's first term.

Description: This paper will examine why CSR defunding produces pricing uncertainty and how regulators can alleviate these risks when insurers price 2020 premiums.

Description: Read the December 2018 issue of Long-Term Care News published by the Long Term Care Section. Newsletters provide practical information for the working actuary, articles on trends that impact sections and news about section activities.

Description: Many life and health insurers are beginning to use Predictive Analytics (PA) for a variety of purposes. This article addresses the unique challenges and potential disruption PA brings to the risk manager, as well as the opportunities.

Description: Latest in our on-going series in which we have a candid discussion with one the insurance industry's most respected and high profile risk practitioners

Description: Read the December 2018 issue of The Financial Reporter, published by the Financial Reporting Section.

Description: Recent major changes in California law make the CA Partnership for Long Term Care affordable for those with moderate income and assets.

Description: The article focuses on implementation considerations for insurance companies that will be implementing both IFRS 17 and US GAAP Targeted Improvements. Many of the practical considerations are common to both implementations and will also be of interest to readers who are only implementing one of these changes.

Description: Read the November 2018 issue of Reinsurance News published by the Reinsurance Section.

Description: In this article, we will describe EY’s five-pillar approach that balances practicality with comprehensiveness, and how this applies to LTC model validation.

Description: A discussion on how reinsurance is quickly evolving.

Description: Read the October 2018 issue of Retirement Section News published by the Retirement Section. Newsletters provide practical information for the working actuary, articles on trends that impact sections and news about section activities.

Description: Discusses help those who do not have enough quarters of work to qualify for Social Security.

Description: Constant Proportion Portfolio Insurance (CPPI) performance is assessed on realistic assumptions and dynamic strategies to mitigate the so-called ”gap risk”.

Description: Read the October 2018 issue of Product Matters published by the Product Development Section. Newsletters provide practical information for the working actuary, articles on trends that impact sections and news about section activities.

Description: Discussion of FinTech including PIMCO research on 401(k) use of managed accounts and observations about cybersecurity, genetic data, and retirement spend down.

Description: DB pensions should remain as one of the compensation tools available to workers and management as they work out the value-maximizing means of delivering compensation to workers.

Description: As companies implement PBR, this article outlines challenges regarding the treatment of accelerated underwriting under VM-20 and in light of future innovation.

Description: Read the September 2018 issue of The Financial Reporter published by the Financial Reporting Section.

Description: Read the August 2018 issue of Risk Management published by the Joint Risk Management Section. Newsletters provide practical information for the working actuary, articles on trends that impact sections and news about section activities.

Description: Update on LTC Section activities and other issues from the perspective of a Society of Actuaries' staff actuary.