Description: Feature article discussing the complexity of financial markets.

Description: This meeting session from the April 1982 Society of Actuaries meeting in Orlando, presented a discussion on allocation of assets and investment income. The discussions included: implications of allocating specific assets to particular lines of business, introduction and management of specific allocation procedures, and the principal allocation methods.

Description: Presented at April 1985 Spring Meeting. Discusses: Futures, Options, Floating rate securities, Oil and Gas, Real Estate, Leased equipment, Joint ventures, Stripped securities, Zero coupon bonds, Mortgage pools, Sales - leasebacks.

Description: From a session at the annual meeting of the Society of Actuaries held in Chicago, Illinois, October 15-18, 2000 Discussion of purposes and approaches for creating interest-rate scenarios.

Description: Panelists: [1] provide an overview of embedded value [EV] and appropriate assumptions, and a comparison with fair value [FV], [2] discuss the various stages of management usage of EV, and [3] review a company's recent actual use of EV across products and for the purpose of determining optimal product mix. From the 2002 Record of Society of Actuaries, Volume 28, No. 3. Session 91PD of the Boston Annual Meeting.

Description: Discusses the types of risks that are considered derivatives, the pricing of a derivative, how to manage derivative risks once they are on your books, and some specific examples of how companies are managing them. From the 2002 Record of Society of Actuaries, Volume 28, No. 3. Session 93PD of the Boston Annual Meeting.

Description: Presented at May 1986 Spring Meeting. This session discussion is about techniques companies are using to maintain compatibility between investment practices and pricing assumptions for interest-sensitive products: Segregated assets, Use of options/futures, Asset/liability matching, Market value adjustments.

Description: The external actuary must balance the goals of the company with a realistic assessment of the chances of achieving them, uncovering hidden value while scaling back on aggressive targets to achieve a balanced, defensible end product with buy-in from the seller's team. From Actuarial Considerations in Insurance Mergers and Acquisitions, M-FI03-1.

Description: Discusses asset and liability modeling for collateralized mortgage obligations [CMOs]. Assumes knowledge from previous Session 3. Session 8 of the 1991 Valuation Actuary Symposium.

Description: The excess spread approach introduced in this paper addresses the true economic profitability of investment oriented products by looking at the spread between the earnings rate on the assets and the rate required to be earned on the assets to satisfy the liabilities. For many products, an important part of the liability cost is the value of interest rate options embedded in the policies. The excess spread approach incorporates an option-pricing technique that is sufficiently flexible to handle different interest rate environments.