Description: 1998 Valuation Actuary Symposium. In this open forum questions were fielded by the panel of experts. Some of the questions: 1. How do you pick spreads for use in your reinvestment strategy? 2. What's generally being done in terms of dynamically modeling policyholder lapsation? 3. How do companies treat riders and dump-in premiums and estimated gross profits for GAAP? 4. What impact does the current interest environment have on testing you are going to do this year? 5. Are there any suitable techniques for trying to aggregate the variable products with the fixed products?

Description: This session at the 2004 Valuation Actuary Symposium discusses dealing with volatile equity returns with DAC ammortization methodologies of stochastic DAC and mean reversion.

Description: This session from the 1993 Valuation Actuary Symposium covers emerging GAAP issues including market value accounting and the impact on the company, management information, FAS 97, FAS 115, FAS 107 and FAS 114, recent development in GAAP for mutuals, cash flow testing for reviewing GAAP reserve adequacy and purchase accounting.

Description: This paper discusses three methods for the amortization of deferred acquisition expenses, DAC and the results when actual experience differs significantly from that assumed. The methods include a static approach with prescheduled amortization, a dynamic technique called the expense reserve factor method, and an aggregate or accumulated premium revenue method. A discussion follows the paper. From Transactions of Society of Actuaries 1978, Vol. 30.

Description: This session from the 1995 SOA New York City Meeting discusses Financial Accounting Standard 115 for valuing assets at market, surplus volatility and what that means in a market-value accounting environment and fair value of liabilities. From the Record of the Society of Actuaries, Vol. 21, No. 2.

Description: This panel discussion session explored alternative methods for accounting recognition of the costs of policyholder dividends. The theoretical bases, as well as the impact on anticipated earnings patterns, are discussed. Implementation issues are also discussed. Discussion of participating products in the UK and accounting methods used for them is also included.

Description: 1994 SOA Spring Meeting, San Francisco. This session on Purchase GAAP accounting provides insight on related topics currently under discussion by the Emerging Issues Task Force of FASB.

Description: 1996 Valuation Actuary Symposium. Topics discussed in this session on GAAP and purchase GAAP included: 1. FAS 115, so-called actuarial or SEC adjustments, and how practice has been evolving in that area. 2. How companies determine the gross margins for mutual GAAP products and the traditional participating business of mutual companies. 3. Mutual company GAAP. 4. Basics of purchase accounting.

Description: The actuarial profession is faced with a problem of determining delta-ized reserves on a basis which will include appropriate provision for adverse deviations in mortality, lapses, interest rates, and expense rates. This paper describes briefly a method which could be used to solve this Followed by papers submitted by 2 authors problem in a flexible manner.

Description: The panel discussed the accounting profession's attempts to codify an area that has long been subject to a wide variety of practice. Topics covered: 1. Accounting under the various methods of acquisitions: pooling of interests, purchase of stock, assumption reinsurance, indemnity reinsurance. 2. Benefit reserve approaches under Statement of Financial Accounting Standards 60 within the context of defined-valuation premium approach versus defined-initial reserve approach. 3. Approaches to determination of discount rate for the present value of future profits and purchase date 4. Effect of differing levels of goodwill on earnings accretion versus dilution.