Description: The article is a series of question and answers related to microinsrance with the editors of the book "Actuaries in Microinsurance".

Description: Is Risk/Return a sound tool for decision-making? No. It is not consistent, not objective, distorts decision and degrades governance. Why? What shall we do then?

Description: This material, Appendix I of the 1987 Valuation Actuary Handbook, is an appendix to Chapter II of the Handbook, ‘Methods of Analyzing cash Flows to Test for Reserve Adequacy.’ The author provides additional support in his appendix which discusses the theory behind MacAulay duration and provides illustrative examples.

Description: Discusses and critiques a report entitled Adjusting Life Insurance Company Earnings by John La Maochia, Jr. The report describes and critiques the various methods stock analysts use to adjust statutory earnings to evaluate company earnings.

Description: By necessity, attributions of financial processes require approximations. Tools used for approximations include Aumann-Shapley, time step, step-through, average step-through, partial derivative, and average partial derivative. Significantly non-linear paths can cause problems during attribution. Time (theta) and market factors must be handled concurrently. Typically contractual factors can be handled separately. Average Step-Through, Aumann-Shapley and Aumann-Shapley-3 points perform the best given the same time period. Attribution should be done with fairly small time steps as opposed to using a lot of points in the Aumann-Shapley calculation, but using Aumann-Shapley-3 points as a last step has some advantages.

Description: Reflections of a Regulatory Actuary by Larry Gorski

Description: An analysis of the 1999-2011 experience of all Blues plans of betweeen $1.8 and $3.8 billion in annual revenue in 2010 to determine if there is any empirical evidence of an industry underwriting cycle. The analysis shows there is no such evidence.

Description: Actuaries have been indebted to the Statistical Bureau of the Metropolitan Life for studies in vital statistics associated with the names of Dublin, Lew and Spiegelman and a recent study by Quint and Cody is in this tradition. It is headed Preeminence and Mortality and was presented to the Annual Meeting of the American Public Health Association last November. This article shares further perspectives about longevity, and the characteristics of people who experience long lives.

Description: The article compares the return characteristics, return, volatility, and correlation, to that of other possible selections as a DC safe option. It concludes that stable value is pareto superior to all other safe option candidates, and is therefore the optimal safe option.

Description: Identifies current trends and considerations when setting the mortality improvement assumption for individual life insurance in the US.