Description: Letter from the Chair of the Product Development Council. Challenging times bring opportunities. Today's low interest environment is a rallying cry for our industry to transform our products and the way we do business

Description: This article discusses reaction to the requirement by the European Union for gender neutral pricing. One UK insuring is providing rates that are lower if you "Drive Like a Girl". The benefit to the consumer is lower rates as females tend to have better auto insurance experience as compared to males. Nothing is preventing males from applying for the coverage. However, it is clearly marketed to females as one can see from their branding materials. A black box attached behind the dashboard of the car monitors the driving (speed, acceleration, etc.) to confirm that they are indeed "Driving Like a Girl" as their insurance assumes.

Description: In this article, the author discusses discuss the use of the Cox Proportional Hazards Model in developing a predictive underwriting model that produces a mortality multiplier for each individual.

Description: It is worth the effort to obtain a pricing surface. It helps make an informed decision and facilitate the pricing conversation within and outside a company.

Description: Ways of closing the mortality protection gap, by leveraging some of the new technology, data and analytics to reduce the friction in the buying process.

Description: A discussion of how patents can be used to recover the cost of innovation in product development and operations

Description: discussion of a new product idea for retirement planning which integrates a variety of needs estate death benefit, annuity income, disability income, etc. into one product

Description: This article addresses the issues of short-term volatility, the non-equivalency of traders and, how product development is being impacted by market consistency.

Description: How Vitality's Shared Value insurance model aligns the incentives of policyholders with insurer to improve health and create and share actuarial surplus.

Description: This article delves into a new line of statistical thinking of the author, that may be useful for product development actuaries. The key concept is how product design can produce products that diversify quickly, meaning that the company can be confident of a profitable product line, based on fewer sales than might be true for other designs.