Description: From the 1985 Valuation Actuary Symposium A review of the process involved in making an actuarial opinion and in developing the related actuarial report to management. This was accomplished through a case study approach, specifically covering a universal life product.

Description: From a session at the 2002 Valuation Actuary Symposium, held in Lake Buena Vista, Florida, September 19–20, 2002 Discussion of issues and the impact of current statutory valuation requirements for life insurance policies. Requirements covered include the Actuarial Standard of Practice on XXX, Actuarial Guideline AXXX, and Actuarial Guidelines 36 and 37. Products and issues discussed include nonlevel premium or nonlevel benefit insurance e.g., selective term, universal life with secondary guarantees or shadow accounts, determination of X factors, interpretation issues regarding XXX, variable life, and variable universal life, equity-indexed universal life, and the new CSO mortality table.

Description: Book review of The Fundamentals of Pension Mathematics by Barnet E. Barin. Mr. Griffin supports the text as a valuable contribution in particular his analysis of gains/losses by source during the transition to utilizing computers for pension valuation.

Description: A review of Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, including a review of the need for life and health insurance actuaries to review and, in most cases, substantially strengthen their internal controls over financial reporting.

Description: From a session at the 2001 Valuation Actuary Symposium, held in Lake Buena Vista, Florida, November 29-30, 2001 Presents questions to actuaries who are experts in the field of actuarial valuation of insurance company assets and liabilities.

Description: Panel discussion of alternative approaches to the design of reserve standards, to include those topics discussed in several recent papers and committee reports.

Description: The author points out ways to to identify potential weaknesses in an actuarial process and provides ideas to improve the process.

Description: On October 30, 2015, the SOA Assumption Development and Governance Group, an informal discussion group consisting of nearly 200 interested actuaries with topics pertaining to actuarial assumption development and governance, organized an industry discussion call on end-to-end assumption documentation practices. The purpose of this call was to generate a large list of ideas for best-practice assumption documentation. More than thirty companies were represented in the call, including direct insurers, reinsurers and consulting firms. This article is the work product of the discussion written by Laurie Li and Alex Zaidlin.

Description: View the complete issue for the August 2014 Reinsurance News newsletter.