Description: A discussion of funding arrangements that can reduce the costs of providing medical coverage through lower reserves or state tax savings, instead of through cutting benefits.

Description: This article discusses calculating the present value given a set of non-level interest rates and a stream of cash flow emerging from that context. This is the nub of a problem that surfaces in determining the adequacy of a reserve in a manner which fully takes into account both the assets and liabilities involved.

Description: This session discussion is about collateralized mortgage obligations, its definition, characteristics, underlying assumptions, modeling of these securities for pricing and projection purposes and dynamic performance characteristics of CMO classes. From Record of the Society of Actuaries Vol. 15, No. 3A.

Description: 1996 Valuation Actuary Symposium. In this teaching session on liability modeling, the panelists discussed the key aspects of identifying and gathering the data required to construct models, the model building process including objectives and considerations, and the modeling process from the standpoint of policyholder and company behaviors.

Description: In this article, the author recaps his experience at The 2009 Berkshire Hathaway annual shareholders meeting.

Description: This is a short story on the retirement income calculator.

Description: This article discusses the impact of rising interest rates on annuity writers and life insurers and the risk management challenges it presents. Falling interest rates were addressed as well.

Description: This paper explores the considerations involved in the merger of mutual life insurance companies, with emphasis on the unique problems of maintenance of equity between the various policy owners affected. The paper written by Howard Kayton and Robert Tookey is followed by a discussion from several people

Description: In May, 2001, the Casualty Actuarial Society (CAS) and the Society of Actuaries (SOA) jointly issued a request for proposals on the research topic “Modeling of Economic Series Coordinated with Interest Rate Scenarios.” The objectives of this request were to develop a research relationship with selected persons to investigate this topic; produce a literature review of work previously done in the area of economic scenario modeling; determine appropriate data sources and methodologies to enhance economic modeling efforts relevant to the actuarial profession; and produce a working model of economic series, coordinated with interest rates, that could be made public and used by actuaries via the CAS / SOA websites to project future economic scenarios. Categories of economic series to be modeled included interest rates, equity price levels, inflation rates, unemployment rates, and real estate price levels.

Description: This article questions the validity of long term market return expectations using macroeconomics and analytical arguments.