Description: Letter from the Chair of the Product Development Council. Challenging times bring opportunities. Today's low interest environment is a rallying cry for our industry to transform our products and the way we do business

Description: This article addresses the issues of short-term volatility, the non-equivalency of traders and, how product development is being impacted by market consistency.

Description: Discussion of pricing and underwriting Long Term Care coverage that is combined with annuities or life insurance.

Description: Compares how other industries (in this case, Fast Food) researches and tests new products. Provides examples of how the insurance industry can efficiently research and test new product concepts before going to market.

Description: As we further explore how life insurance customers think and behave, we can address their needs more effectively. Using data and predictive analytics we can better identify groups to target. By embracing technology and approaching customers with the right distribution channels based on preference, we can make life insurance more accessible. We can speak the customers' language. We can understand that they are not all created equal, and tailor products to meet individual needs. In short, we can leverage data, research and technology to become very consumer centric. Getting closer to the customer, can we lower the perceived cost, and raise the perceived benefit of life insurance to a point where customers get excited? Will this not then be a product to buy, not sell?

Description: Constant Proportion Portfolio Insurance (CPPI) performance is assessed on realistic assumptions and dynamic strategies to mitigate the so-called ”gap risk”.

Description: Describes the methodology of conditional stochastic pricing.

Description: The Congressional Budget Office reports that out-of-pocket expenses accounted for 19 percent of the total long-term care LTC expenses in the United States in 2006, and private LTC insurance accounted for only 8 percent of these expenses, which shows that Americans are underinsured for LTC expenses. While it is true that public programs like Medicaid and Medicare cover much of the nation’s LTC expenses 68 percent of the total LTC expenses in the United States in 2006, eligibility for these programs comes at a great cost to the individual.

Description: The last few years have seen a dramatic change in the way that insurance products are priced. If we traveled back in time 15 to 20 years, we would see a world where most insurance products were priced on the basis of a few static scenarios. In the last several years, pricing on a stochastic basis has become more mainstream—at least for contracts with embedded guarantees.

Description: Overview of design thinking problem solving method and applications to life insurance