Description: This paper is a theoretical examination of the structure of the property-casualty insurance industry using economic theory to compare companies with agency distribution versus direct distribution. The purpose of the paper is to justify the existence of both types of distribution systems in equilibrium.

Description: This 2001 article warns against the risks of investing in an IPO, particularly in light of recent history.

Description: This session from the 1984 SOA New York City Meeting discusses the investment implications of an aging population including the affect on the national savings rate, economic growth, the dependence on social security and opportunities for the insurance industry. From Record of the Society of Actuaries Vol. 10, No. 3

Description: This paper considers the development of the insurance and investment markets in the EC from an historical and legal point of view. The likely changes as a result of the Single European Act are also considered along with possible ways of ensuring the act is met and the role of the actuary in that process. From Actuarial Research Clearing House 1991, Vol. 1.

Description: This article discusses creating a good organizational strategy for incentive compensation plans.

Description: The author provides insights into the reasons for the decline of Japanese government bond yields to record lows as of October 1997. This article originally appeared in the November 1997 issue of International Economic Trends, and is reprinted courtesy of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

Description: This paper highlights the impact on shareholder equity and AOCI due to the introduction of LDTI during a period of falling interest rates. The paper is intended to provide an example of an analysis that will help actuaries explain the interaction of LDTI and falling interest rates.

Description: At our Houston meeting PD l, Donald D. Hester, Professor of Economics at University of Wisconsin, outlined a novel investment system aimed at protecting purchasing power of the lender’s funds from inflation’s ravages. This article is summary of that presentation.

Description: Feature article discussing how market interest rates and bond yields dropped in response to the global financial crisis in late 2008, and they have struggled to return to their prior levels, in part because the Federal Reserve has made efforts to spur growth and lending in a sluggish U.S. economy.

Description: In this paper, we illustrate how to value American-style options using the Least-Squares Monte Carlo LSM approach proposed by Longstaff and Schwartz 2001 and investigate whether there exists an optimal regression complexity in the LSM framework for options pricing. In particular, we use the smoothing spline in the regression step, which allows us to control the regression complexity on a continuous scale with just one tuning parameter. Numerical results on American put options indicate that we need to use more than a linear regression, but as the regression becomes more complex, the accuracy of the LSM method quickly deteriorates. From 39th Actuarial Research Conference.