Description: Overview of a recent visit to silicon valley and how the learnings from this trip can be applied in an insurance setting.

Description: A review of a book by a former Commissioner of Social Security, in which he shares his thoughts on what Social Security is, the new law, the financing, the benefits, the types of employment covered, the benefit amounts, the retirement test, and several subsidiary topics.

Description: The five words for ERM are transparency, discipline, alignment, adaptability and resilience. This article focuses on transparency, discipline and resilience.

Description: The letter from the president addresses frequently asked questions from members and potential future members of the Society of Actuaries regarding career development.

Description: The right mindset is essential to success in any number of arenas.

Description: A review of the last 50 years, concluding that the insurance industry in Canada has been slow to react to consumers' shift in focus from long-term security to rate of return.

Description: This articles showcases the principles of effective servant leadership.

Description: This article sheds light on the various ways machine learning can uncover patterns within data to add unique value and insights to businesses.

Description: Recent advances in mortality modeling have enabled applicant-specific quantification of mortality risk in life insurance applicants using laboratory and physical measurements. Relative to more conventional underwriting, this approach identifies a small population of significantly under-priced policy and a much larger, cross-subsidizing group whose risk is presently overestimated. Applicants placed in the highest percentile by this scoring methodology are more than 10X as likely to die in a given period as their demographic peers, and represent approximately 5% of short-term claims. Implications for product design are substantial in both the short- and long-term, as the possibilities for adverse selection grow, and the opportunity for fully individualized pricing raises the more distant prospect of products with as many rate classes as applicants.

Description: Latest in a series applying Buddhist philosophy to the working world of the actuary. The focus is on the author's experience in yoga teacher training.