Description: Many top-performing businesses aren’t just risk aware, but rather risk intelligent. Such a posture helps prepare companies for a major event and can demonstrate to a regulator or auditor that an appropriately strong control framework is in place. Better still, companies gain real strategic value from a “risk adjusted” understanding not only of their threats and vulnerabilities, but also the upside opportunities associated with various risks. It starts with having both qualitative and quantitative information to identify, assess and manage risks. Strategic risk management, at its core, is about creating value by increasing transparency and accountability, and quality of information. More than a mere compliance exercise, effective risk management enables more informed strategic decision making, increased accountability and transparency, a greater likelihood of organizational success, and – ultimately – competitive advantage, as borne out by many studies that correlate risk management and financial results.

Description: 1987 Valuation Actuary Handbook: Chapter 1: Addresses life insurance company statutory reserve valuation.

Description: This article explains how to create more maintainable models using abstractions by relating it to option, machine learning and machine intelligence models.

Description: How can actuaries tailor their work to a target audience? This article explores success stories and key considerations when preparing work for others.

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: An outline of an additional method for exposure formula toll road diagrams, which supplements the usual one- and two-dimensional methods suggested by Gershenson.

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: 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.