Description: The strategic plan of the Society of Actuaries (SOA) Research Institute includes several important research goals. One goal is to support emerging issues and topics in established practice areas and encourage the development of research projects that have a strong impact on the actuarial profession. The primary purpose is to select and fund high-quality research projects that directly educate members on applicable topics. Additionally, the SOA Research Institute desires to develop additional intellectual capital that serves the interest of the public and the profession’s stakeholders. The Research Executive Committee (REC) of the SOA Research Institute oversees the funding of the Emerging Issues Pool. This key source of research funding is used to sponsor projects that are beneficial to the entire profession, across practice area boundaries that may require funding levels beyond the normal annual funding budgets of research committees and sections. The REC is issuing this Request for Proposals (RFP) to fulfill the strategic goals of the organization through the use of this pool for funding new projects.

Description: Three consultants offer their views on a pandemic and post-pandemic economic future that awaits Mexico. COVID-19 deepened the contraction of the Mexican economy. As manufacturing and consumption bounce back, sustaineddemand for services can help recovery. But a policy push is needed. The global pandemic came at a time when the Mexican economy had contracted for five straight quarters due to avariety of factors such as deceleration in investment and private consumption and uncertainty around the free tradeagreement with the United States and Canada. The COVID-19 crisis accelerated this trend, resulting in the largest contraction since the Great Depression of 1929.

Description: The five-year moving average of the Actuaries Climate Index (ACI) reached a new high for the sixth consecutive quarter, according to the latest data release that includes summer 2019.

Description: A preview of the details and content of the new Certificate in Climate Risk to be offered by the SOA beginning in early 2023.

Description: Climate change is making a significant economic impact into the work that actuaries do. Actuaries working in general insurance have been at the forefront of this work for many years. Now, actuaries in investments, pensions, life and health insurance as well as enterprise risk management are considering the risks of climate change and quantifying the impact of climate change in their modeling. Actuaries can expect to hear of these developments in actuarial circles with speakers representing the Society of Actuaries, the Canadian Institute of Actuaries, the Casualty Actuarial Society, the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries (UK) and/or the International Actuarial Association.

Description: Just in the recent two years, COVID-19 has demonstrated very impressively that a pandemic is not something for which one can fully prepare. However, what makes a pandemic so special and difficult to manage compared to other low frequency and high severity events such as volcanic eruptions or tsunami damage? Frank Schillerexplains what makes a pandemic so different, viz, information uncertainty, exponential growth, and time lags.

Description: The objective of this paper is to discuss the factors that affect and should be considered in the development of social discount rates, with a primary focus on social cost-benefit analyses of climate change-related strategies, programs, and investments involving mitigation and ex-ante adaption efforts.

Description: Overview of guest editorials and special issues in the Annals of Actuarial Science, dealing with great societal challenges that the actuarial profession is responding to.

Description: This report will endeavor to introduce the reader to some of the known and developing environmental risks that impact the business of insurance, with a specific focus on North American risks.

Description: This article examines the property losses sustained by homeowners and the economic losses sustained by insurance companies and government agencies due to California wildfires.