Description: This paper asserts that funding is the natural result of managing liability, and, from there, examines some of the funding liabilities of pension plans. From The Future of Pension Plan Funding and Disclosure Monograph, M-RS05-1.

Description: Economic capital is an embedded part of the banking risk management and regulatory framework. The insurance industry has relied on rating agency and regulatory formulas that have been criticized as overcapitalizing and not appropriately differentiating risk drivers in the capital formulation. The emergence of C-3 Phase I and C-3 Phase II have introduced an economic approach to capital in the insurance industry. This half-day seminar takes a detailed look at the subject of economic capital. From the Record of the Society of Actuaries 2005, Volume 31, No. 1: 2005 New Orleans Life Spring Meeting, May 22-24, 2005, Session 9 Seminar.

Description: This presentation is a panel discussion, session 56PD, from the 2004 Spring Meeting of the Society of Actuaries, held June 14-15 in San Antonio, TX. Tail risk, long recognized as important to insurance organizations, is being evaluated in a new light, with new approaches. The panelists review various approaches for measuring tail risk and how to price for tail risk using capital-market consistent techniques. From the Record of Society of Actuaries, Volume 30, No. 2.

Description: Discussion regarding who's to blame for cost increase, Government's role to ensure coverage and keep costs down, steps to control costs, plan design changes. Issue No. 47.

Description: An Overview of Stochastic Simulation modeling techniques and usages

Description: This study was sponsored by the Society of Actuaries Health Section. This paper explores the relative significance of aging as a determinant of financial cost of health care beyond age 50, with particular attention to the effect for ages 65 and older. The paper presents concepts of aging factors and aging curves, which define relative values between ages for utilization or cost of health care services. General conclusions are drawn from Medicare data that utilization and cost differ by age, but that aging factors vary across services and may be less significant at very old ages. The author then turns to the question of measuring the significance of an aging curve assumption and what accuracy is lost in the simpler alternative of a single value across an age range.

Description: This paper examines concepts from both financial economic and actuarial science as applied to defined benefit schemes using a simple discounted cash-flow framework as a reference point. From Current Pension Actuarial Practice in Light of Financial Economics Symposium, M-RS04-1.

Description: This paper takes the position that it is possible to compute annual pension costs without computing liabilities first, or at all, even implicitly. Moreover, such an approach can be shown to have powerful advantages in stochastic financial environments. From Current Pension Actuarial Practice in Light of Financial Economics Symposium, M-RS04-1.

Description: There is a wide range of literature on aging and health care. We sample this literature and find it fits into the subcategories of theoretical aging, medical significance of aging, treatment of the elderly, and resource allocation to the elderly. Themes are that financial arrangements can cause inefficient and ineffective care and that care guidelines need to developed specifically for the elderly rather than extrapolating guidelines for younger patients.

Description: Reflections of a Regulatory Actuary by Larry Gorski

Description: Discussion of Human capital and its implicit asset and liability cash flows how insurance companies could help measure and provide products to help match up the timing of those cash flows. From Asset-Liability Integration, M-FI02-1.

Description: Discussion of the insurance purchase decision for corporations, using an ALM perspective of utilizing insurance to maximize the net present value of cash inflows minus out flows. Also discusses how ALM concepts can be used to value a corporation, using discounted values of cash inflows minus outflows and the risks the corporation faces with respect to the amounts or timing of those cash flows. From Asset-Liability Integration, M-FI02-1.

Description: This presentation is a Teaching Session, number 30TS, from the 2002 Valuation Actuary Symposium, held September 19-20 in Lake Buena Vista, FL. The panelists discuss modeling issues for products with embedded options, such as minimum living or death benefit guarantees on variable life and annuities, and annuity death benefit enhancements. They discuss the risks posed by these features and products, selecting realistic dynamic assumptions, techniques used in modeling these features and products, stochastic analysis, and presenting results to best communicate risks clearly. Discussion from participants is included.

Description: Presented at May 2002 Spring Meeting. Discusses industry trends in agent compensation with the intent of retaining and attracting the better performing agents and aligning incentives with desired behaviors, while placing the insurer in an acceptable financial position.

Description: The author notes that “current market value is highly relevant, but its accuracy is limited. Historical accounting, on the other hand, is highly accurate, but is of little relevance.” The article then goes on to discuss two leading methods for performing fair valuation of liabilities: the actuarial appraisal method and the option pricing method, and how they can be reconciled.

Description: This presentation, session number 7PD, took place at the 2000 Annual Meeting of the Society of Actuaries, held October 15-18 in Chicago. The panelists discusses current separate account product topics including quantifying the cost of guarantees such as minimum death benefits and minimum living benefits, and equity-indexed product investing and hedging. Discussion from participants is included. From the Record of the Society of Actuaries, Volume 26, No. 3.

Description: This analysis provides an overview of the functional components of the managed care system. It discusses the market forces underlying the United States’ system for health care financing and delivery and suggests how market forces impact the health care industry. The analysis focuses on societal goals for health care delivery and on managed care’s effectiveness in enabling achievement of those goals. The analysis develops and uses an innovative model developed to summarize the complex interplay among the many stakeholders, or participants, in the health care system. The model provides a framework for analysis of the many relationships among stakeholders. The analysis also highlights current issues in managed care, particularly the barriers that impede collaboration among stakeholders.

Description: From a session at the 2000 Valuation Actuary Symposium held in Washington DC, September 14-15, 2000 Discussion of newer and more innovative investment structures and the modeling of these securities in cash-flowing testing and asset/liabilities management analysis.

Description: An outline of a teaching session at the 2000 Valuation Actuary Symposium held in Washington DC, September 14-15, 2000, discussing the evolution toward fair value accounting methodologies

Description: There appears to be many similarities between enterprise risk management techniques and the theory underlying the unified valuation system UVS. What are the challenges of each, and can the methods learn from each other? From the Record of the Society of Actuaries, Volume 27, No. 2: Toronto Spring Meeting.June 20–22, 2001, Session 58PD.

Description: From a session at a meeting of the Society of Actuaries held in San Diego, CA, June 22-23, 2000 The panel discusses: 1 Financial modeling tools used by the actuarial profession, 2 Pricing techniques used by Wall Street financial analysts, 3 Advantages and disadvantages of each approach 4 Market implications of each approach, and 5 Potential for harmonization of the two techniques.

Description: Presented at May 2000 Spring Meeting. Discusses the public policy issues regarding access to health insurance coverage. In particular, the speakers focus on the problem of the uninsured and on the debate of shifting from a primarily employer-sponsored financing of health-care coverage to an individual market system or greater government subsidies.

Description: Panelists discuss the methods HMOs employ to measure their providers' quality of care, outcomes, compliance with best practice guidelines, and cost control. From the Record of the Society of Actuaries, Vol. 25, No. 2.

Description: Panelists report on the status of activities by national associations in regard to risk-based capital requirements for health insurers. From the Record of the Society of Actuaries, Vol. 24, No. 2.

Description: Panelists discuss the role of the valuation actuary in health insurance. From the Record of the Society of Actuaries, Vol. 24, No. 2.

Description: This article is about the Course 8 series. Course 8 provides candidates with essential advanced specialized education in one of seven practice areas: individual insurance, group life and health, managed care, U.S. pensions, Canadian pensions, finance, and investments.

Description: These are the abstract, outline, graphs and tables of the paper “Conclusions from Michigan Studies of Social Security Financing”. By such studies we mean the papers prepared during the past five years by actuarial students and Cecil Nesbitt, and which have appeared in ARCH. The paper is in three parts: A lengthy Abstract, followed by 17 pages of text, graphs, tables and references. The third part is a 10 page Appendix which gives the proofs of text statements.

Description: Traditional mean-variance method does not take skewness of the random rate of return into consideration. It only considers minimum variance for a given acceptable rate of return, which limited the probability of obtaining higher rate of return. If the skewness of return for the portfolio is incorporated into model of traditional approach, then the resulting non-linear programing model is not computational efficient, which certainly is complicated. On the other hand, possibilistic programming provides more efficient techniques to solve the imprecision nature of rate of return and also preserves the original linear model.

Description: This paper establishes the need for home equity conversion schemes for the elderly. It then provides a review of literature pertinent to reverse mortgages paying particular attention to the different types of reverse mortgages and their associated risks. In an attempt to better quantify the general appreciation risk faced by financial institutions issuing reverse mortgages, ARIMA techniques are employed to model Canadian house prices in both current and real dollar terms.

Description: Presented at September 1995 Valuation Actuary Symposium. This presentation will cover differences in Regulation XXX and Regulation 147, possible new XXX designs, and consumer reaction to NAIC's adoption of XXX.

Description: The U.S. actuarial profession is debating whether to introduce Dynamic Solvency Testing DST in the United States and what role it should take in the regulatory process. This article offers some insight into how the DST has fared in Canada, what issues have emerged since it was introduced, and how the DST will evolve differently in the United States.

Description: This is the fourth paper on n-year roll forward reserve financing of public benefit systems, especially Old-Age, Survivors and disability Insurance OASDI, prepared by University of Michigan faculty and students. As the papers have developed, some ideas have been simplified, while others have become more complex. It is concluded that the theoretical model requires further attention. This research can be extended to expand our knowledge of OASDI financing and the applicability of n-year roll forward reserve financing.

Description: This session discusses the role that the SOA, AAA and actuaries have played in developing/analyzing various federal health care reform proposals. What will the future hold for practicing health actuaries? From Record of Society of Actuaries Vol. 20, No. 3A.

Description: Over the last 15-20 years the job of the valuation actuary has become increasingly demanding. This guide lists literature that only addresses requirements and practices for federally licensed Canadian companies.

Description: Generally accepted accounting principles 'GAAP' are those that apply to external financial reporting of publicly owned business enterprises. The principles that constitute GAAP vary between stock and mutual insurers, from product class to product class, and according to the purchase status of the business. This paper highlights additional reading materials that provide concise information regarding GAAP principals.

Description: Panelists consider the future environment of the valuation actuary in the U.S., the current environment in Canada and elsewhere, and the likely future methods of determining financial solvency in the U.S. From the 1988 Record of Society of Actuaries, Vol. 14, No. 4A.

Description: This teaching session was presented as Session 6B at the 1987 Valuation Actuary Symposium. The subject was modeling techniques for use in testing the scenarios being developed by the Canadian Institute of Actuaries, ‘CIA,’ Solvency Standards Committee. The presenters, members of the Committee, have been working on developing a generic modeling approach. Their presentation is limited to the first of three phases of proposed CIA standards for solvency reporting dealing with scenario testing, namely the projection of surplus under various prescribed and selected scenarios.

Description: Discusses the financial impact upon the medical plans for group policyholders, caused by the requirement to continue within the group plan employees and their dependents who become ineligible under the regular eligibility provisions.

Description: In this paper, chapter III of the 1987 Valuation Actuary Handbook, the authors discuss building a liability model to evaluate the C-3 risk. The article discusses the data and assumptions needed, and the importance of sensitivity testing given that the model results are very sensitive to the assumptions used.

Description: This paper was published as chapter II of the 1987 Valuation Actuary Handbook. The authors discuss basic tools for analyzing cash flows, including duration, scenario testing and accumulation vs. present value approach. Discounting of cash flows is discussed including the limitations of using a level interest rate. The final section discusses discounting of interest sensitive cash flows, including a discussion of the disadvantages and advantages of duration analysis. The paper concludes that “duration analysis cannot replace traditional simulations analysis but should be seen by the valuation actuary as a valuable adjunct.”

Description: From the 1985 Valuation Actuary Symposium Discussion of techniques for determining capital requirements needed to support an insurance business, based on the nature of the assets and liabilities on the books and related investment strategies, using ALM modeling

Description: From the 1985 Valuation Actuary Symposium A perspective on the role of the valuation actuary and how it has and will change in the USA, Canada, and the UK.

Description: This paper, originally published in March 1983 as a study note for exam part 10E, and in 1984 in the Transactions of Society of Actuaries Vol. 34, is designed to be a single reference source for actuaries who want to increase their understanding of a GIC. This educational paper provides knowledge on all aspects of GICs, including their history, and has received significant recognition, including the 1984-85 Annual Prize, and the L. Ronald Hill Memorial Prize in 1985.

Description: This is the first of two articles discussing the model laws governing minimum reserves and non-forfeiture values that the NAIC adopted in December 1980. The author, Chairman of the NAIC Technical Task Force on Valuation and Nonforfeiture Value Regulation, in this first article describes the objectives of the revision, which include updating assumptions, increasing flexibility, and improving the ability to deal with new types of products, the cooperative effort entailed, the actuary’s role and responsibilities in doing business under the new law, and the financial impact.

Description: Panel discussion focused on the Effective Use of Capital. Topics included: 1. Definition of capital 2. Appropriate level of capital and surplus in a life insurance company 3. Alternatives for deploying capital 4. Returns a life company should demand on invested capital 5. How much a company should charge for lending its capital in reinsurance transactions

Description: This 1981 session focused on Reinsurance Trends. Questions included: i. Why the recent movement from YRT to Coinsurance? 2. Should a company use a bulk or self-administered system? 3. When is it advantageous to use Coinsurance or modified coinsurance on existing business? 4. Experimental Underwriting - what are the results? 5. Pricing assumptions - where have all the margins gone? 6. When can reinsurance pools be used effectively what are the pitfalls? 7. What's in the future? a. Use of telecommunications and computers to transfer the risk? b. Lower rates and less service? 8. How have changes in reinsurance pricing affected ceding company pricing?

Description: Panel discussion focused on the Effective Use of Capital. Topics included: 1. Definition of capital 2. Appropriate level of capital and surplus in a life insurance company 3. Alternatives for deploying capital 4. Returns a life company should demand on invested capital 5. How much a company should charge for lending its capital in reinsurance transactions

Description: Presentation of proposals that are designed to further improve actuarial education by anticipating educational needs based on future change in the nature of actuarial work. The paper is divided into three sections: I. Current and Past Education of Actuaries II. Actuaries as Customers for Education and III. The Future Educational Needs of Actuaries and How These Needs Might Be Implemented. Followed by several submitted discussion papers.

Description: This is a transcript of a session at the Spring 1975 Meeting in New York and discussed the impact of economic conditions on current pension plan design, funding indexed benefits, investment of pension funds, actuarial responsibilities under ERISA and future outlook. 1975 Record, Vol.1, No.2

Description: This is a discussion about how actuaries have become more and more involved in work outside what may be considered traditional actuarial functions. From Transactions of Society of Actuaries 1969, Vol. 21 Pt. 2, No. 59.

Description: Actuaries have been indebted to the Statistical Bureau of the Metropolitan Life for studies in vital statistics associated with the names of Dublin, Lew and Spiegelman and a recent study by Quint and Cody is in this tradition. It is headed Preeminence and Mortality and was presented to the Annual Meeting of the American Public Health Association last November. This article shares further perspectives about longevity, and the characteristics of people who experience long lives.

Description: Presentation of some of the factors to be considered, and approaches which might be employed, in valuing a life insurance company.