Description: The question of sex discrimination in employee pension plans in life insurance programs is only part of the more general issue of risk classification. Challenges to the old ways of classifying risks are not limited to pensions or to life insurance. It also impacts auto insurance, health insurance, and all other areas. However, for this discussion we will concentrate on sex discrimination in pension and retirement plans. From Record of the Society of Actuaries 1979, Volume 5, No. 1.

Description: Summarizes IRS private letter ruling PLR 200818018, released Jan. 29, 2008, related to treatment of certain payments under Immediate VAs as SEPPs, and discusses its significance.

Description: This article offers issues and trends with immediate payout annuities.

Description: This session at the SOA 2004 Annual Meeting covers payout annuity issues including an overview of product designs, the current market, and underwriting or substandard annuities.

Description: This paper is an analysis of the mortality rates of beneficiaries of charitable gift annuities.

Description: This presentation from Session 17 of the SOA 2004 San Antonio Spring Meeting focuses on new product concepts that are emerging to capture the huge emerging retirement market. Panelists discuss concepts such as incorporating defined benefit concepts into defined contribution plans, insuring the longevity tail, innovations in 'traditional' annuities, 412i insured pension plans for small businesses, and highly impaired care annuities for people already incurring long-term-care costs.. From the Record of the Society of Actuaries, Volume 30, No. 2.

Description: Over the last several decades, mortality trends and life expectancies in developed countries have been improving and are expected to continue to improve in the future. This paper discusses issues of longevity risk and volatility faced by small defined-benefit DB pension plans in Canada and outlines the opportunities available for entrepreneurial insurance companies interested in providing solutions to address these issues.

Description: This paper was presented at the 1956 Society of Actuaries Eastern Spring Meeting, held April 19-20 in Hartford, CT. The author discusses the significant growth of immediate annuities, primarily through settlement options, and recent annuitant mortality improvement trends and experience studies, including a new mortality table, the proposed 1955 American Annuity Table. The author notes the main purpose of his paper is to propose a graded rate system for life income settlement options that is detailed enough to be equitable, yet simple enough to be understood by the policyholder. From Transactions of Society of Actuaries 1956 Volume 8, Number 21.

Description: This report is jointly sponsored by LIMRA International and the Society of Actuaries in collaboration with Ernst & Young. It describes Substandard Annuities and discusses the market opportunity for them, underwriting, the associated risk management issues, and the issues companies need to address when competing in the substandard annuity market. It discusses the single premium immediate annuity, SPIA, in relation to substandard annuities and the differences between the products.

Description: This article discusses a variety of new developments in the annuity market.