Description: background history of the insurance industry and the role of actuaries within it, followed by the current environment and anticipated future environment.

Description: Article AERF in The Actuary, May 1979, Volume 13, Number 5

Description: Chairperson’s column discussing the state of the world today and how that influences investment strategies and describes to seminars the section sponsored to keep members apprised of changes.

Description: Actuaries are accustomed to considering how much conservatism is appropriate in their estimates, whether made for pricing or for mea- surement of liabilities. In the proposals for a new standard on accounting for insurance contracts, this conservatism is referred to by the International Accounting Standards Board IASB and the Financial Accounting Standard Board FASB of the United States as the risk adjustment.

Description: Written from a regulatory perspective, the article covers the purpose of regulation and some regulatory expectations. The topics include the appointed actuary's involvement in corporate governance, reasonability of results when compared to prior results, data quality, familiarity with the company's annual statement and applicable statutes, and areas where appointed actuaries can add value though services provided to smaller life insurance companies.

Description: Recent advances in mortality modeling have enabled applicant-specific quantification of mortality risk in life insurance applicants using laboratory and physical measurements. Relative to more conventional underwriting, this approach identifies a small population of significantly under-priced policy and a much larger, cross-subsidizing group whose risk is presently overestimated. Applicants placed in the highest percentile by this scoring methodology are more than 10X as likely to die in a given period as their demographic peers, and represent approximately 5% of short-term claims. Implications for product design are substantial in both the short- and long-term, as the possibilities for adverse selection grow, and the opportunity for fully individualized pricing raises the more distant prospect of products with as many rate classes as applicants.

Description: New Zealand is about to launch its first variable annuity with guaranteed lifetime withdrawal benefits. The product design is mindful of the lessons from the financial crisis in the United States, Europe and Japan.

Description: Is Risk/Return a sound tool for decision-making? No. It is not consistent, not objective, distorts decision and degrades governance. Why? What shall we do then?

Description: Proposes alternatives for estimating the long term interest returns in Indexed Universal Life products. Defends expected return of 20%-45% on hedge budgets.