Description: On October 30, 2015, the SOA Assumption Development and Governance Group, an informal discussion group consisting of nearly 200 interested actuaries with topics pertaining to actuarial assumption development and governance, organized an industry discussion call on end-to-end assumption documentation practices. The purpose of this call was to generate a large list of ideas for best-practice assumption documentation. More than thirty companies were represented in the call, including direct insurers, reinsurers and consulting firms. This article is the work product of the discussion written by Laurie Li and Alex Zaidlin.

Description: Issue introduction and theme of how to improve our technical skills and soft skills to better cope with a rapidly changing world.

Description: On October 30, 2015, the SOA Assumption Development and Governance Group, an informal discussion group consisting of nearly 200 interested actuaries with topics pertaining to actuarial assumption development and governance, organized an industry discussion call on end-to-end assumption documentation practices. The purpose of this call was to generate a large list of ideas for best-practice assumption documentation. More than thirty companies were represented in the call, including direct insurers, reinsurers and consulting firms. This article is the work product of the discussion written by Laurie Li and Alex Zaidlin.

Description: A discussion of the efforts to implement straight through processing and standardization of the HIPAA form for long term care claims data.

Description: The SOA president discusses how communication skills are of paramount importance to actuaries’ success.

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: Remarks on a recent series of articles in 'The National Underwriter' on risk selection and related regulation.

Description: Book review on Standards for Discussion and Presentation of Errors in Survey and Census Data by the American Statistical Association, Washington, D.C., 1975. The material will be of interest to actuaries and of help in preparing their own study reports. The guidelines discuss some relatively simple means of presenting error estimates for published data.

Description: Writing tips for actuaries – skipping the usual guidelines you get in most books on writing. They represent a half century of personal successes and failures.

Description: This article discusses challenges that short-term predictions have on actuaries' reputations, both as individuals and as a profession, and discusses strategies to improve our professionalism and better manage this risk.