Description: Sooner or later a casualty actuary is confronted by the question, Given a history of paid loss amounts by calendar year, what should reserves be? Often, it is not possible to accurately gather and analyze additional data within the time constraints for the reserving decision. The algebraic reserving method presented in this paper offers one approach to rapidly addressing this problem. The paper consists of four sections - General Considerations, Formulas, Examples, and Conclusion.

Description: This paper presents the modeling of mortality risk from exposure to a potential future extreme event such as a natural disaster and a terrorist attack, and its impact on life insurance. With this new model, quantities associated with the total force of mortality such as survival function are derived and the impact of mortality risk on life insurance is examined.

Description: Guaranteed Annuity Options GAOs are options available to holders of certain pension policies. This paper studies GAOs using two models for the interest rate the Vasicek and the Cox-Ingersoll-Ross models. An actuarial approach is used to value the GAOs and compared with the value of a replicating portfolio.

Description: Author discusses how the proposed new AOMR will affect small companies.

Description: Retirees and their advisors should construct diversified portfolios of retirement income, allocating among various retirement income classes that include Social Security, annuities, and systematic withdrawals from invested assets. This essay discusses the pros and cons of various retirement income generators and the issues with constructing retirement income portfolios.

Description: This presentation is a panel discussion from the 1991 Annual Meeting of the Society of Actuaries, held October 20-23 in Toronto. The panelists discuss the current life insurance company merger and acquisition environment, and determining the value of a life insurance company. Topics include the actuarial valuation methodology, including the just adopted actuarial standard of practice, investment analyst valuation, and the risks associated with change of control. Discussion from participants is included. From the Record of Society of Actuaries, Volume 17, No. 4B.

Description: This is an abstract of presentation from 39th Actuarial Research Conference, 8/5-7/2004, University of Iowa in Iowa City, Iowa. In this talk, we examine the modeling of insurance losses resulting from natural catastrophes, particularly losses to residential and commercial structures as a result of earthquakes. The model proposed can also be used for other types of natural catastrophes such as floods and hurricanes.

Description: This session from the 1982 SOA Spring Meeting features the threat that long term inflation poses on investments. It reviews historical rates of return on T-Bills, bonds and stocks, funding certain liabilities with a 'Dedicated Bond Portofio' or DBP, a Master Trust and purchasing real estate with retirement plan assets. From Record of the Society of Actuaries 1982, Volume 8, No. 1.

Description: From a session at the 2001 Valuation Actuary Symposium, held in Lake Buena Vista, Florida, November 29-30, 2001 Discussion of financial restructuring trends and the impact of those trends on the insurance industry and challenges for those companies that have recently experienced some form of financial restructuring.

Description: This paper is to some extent a sequel to my previous paper A Bond Manager's Method for ALM published in Actuarial Research Clearing House Volume 1993.3. It borrows from that paper the concept of benchmark weights for measuring the sensitivity of the present value of a set of cash flows to changes in interest rates. However, a completely different approach to calculating benchmark weights is presented.