Description: Update on Principles-Based Reserving

Description: The author notes “the last major change in the Valuation and Non-forfeiture Laws occurred during the 1940's when the work of the Guertin Committee resulted in the adoption by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners NAIC of the Standard Valuation and Non-forfeiture Laws. While there have been a number of amendments to these laws since their adoption, both insurance department and company actuaries have concluded that there is need for a general overhaul of these standard laws to make them more responsive to today's business and regulatory needs.” The article goes on to discuss recent developments, recommendations, and legislative action, including the work of the Society of Actuaries Special Committee on Valuation and Non-forfeiture Laws, and the NAIC Technical Task Force.

Description: Describes a process for identifying relevant industry experience to credibility-weight with relevant company experience to set modeling assumptions and margins.

Description: Since solvency assessment depends on a financial reporting framework, one needs risk metrics for use in financial reporting. The essay argues that conceptually, the cost of capital is the appropriate metric for reserves, while a probability level is the appropriate metric for capital. Then the essay advocates stress testing on specific scenarios as a better practical approach to ORSA.

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: Author discusses the treatment of current life insurance reserves under the tax code in determining a life insurer's taxable income, and what challenges are ahead in the era of principles-based reserves.

Description: Under non-Aristotelian logic, there are multiple values, or shades of gray. Indeed, there may even be unexpected results from logical combinations, like “both” and “neither.” This article discusses how this insight should be applied to the current debate between formula-driven reserves with limited assumption flexibility and the reserve principles approach. For reserve standards, we do need both actuarial judgment grounded in reserving principles and restrictive formula methods or safe harbors.

Description: The NAIC approved the 2012 Individual Annuity Reserve table as the standard for computing reserves for individual annuity contracts and developed a model law regulation for states to adopt. On February 17th, 2015, ACLI submitted a letter to Alexis MacIvor, Chief of the Insurance Branch in the IRS Office of Chief Counsel, notifying her that as of December 24, 2014, 26 states had approved the 2012 IAR Table as the reserve standard for immediate annuity contracts issued on or after January 1, 2015. The letter thus confirms that the 2012 IAR Table is the Prevailing Commissioners' Standard Table for purposes of computing life insurance reserves under section 807(d) of the Code for individual annuity contracts.

Description: This is authors' Fellowship Credit Research Paper. This paper will develop a model for cash flow testing traditional participating insurance that utilizes pricing tools and assumptions to project reserve liabilities. The model makes use of finance and accounting tools to monitor the reasonableness of ending and intermediate surplus results that emerge under the various interest rate scenarios imposed.

Description: Discussion of the 1958 CSO Mortality Table: 1. Considerations regarding continuous functions, age last birthday and changing reserve methods 2. Likelihood of Canadian adoption 3. Impact on extended insurance and automatic premium loan provisions.