Description: Presentation at the 41st Actuarial Research Conference held on August 10-12, 2006 in Montreal, QC. This paper considers the problem of extending regime-switching models for asset returns to the situation with multiple asset markets. The conditional tail expectation CTE is highly sensitive to the assumed dependence structure between the regime models for the different markets. A Monte Carlo simulation is used to illustrate the cost of misspecification. The authors find that the model most commonly used by practitioners is worse than all of the alternatives that they investigate.

Description: In this paper, we derive three important longevity Greeks on the basis of an extended version of the Lee-Carter model that incorporates stochastic volatility.

Description: This paper illustrates a current approach to capital allocation, referred to herein as Tail Contribution Analysis TCA, using it to evaluate the impact of changes in an insurer’s operations by allocating capital to individual lines of business. It then highlights a common problem in the implementation of the procedure arising from reserve volatility and briefly notes the failure of the methodology to account for a firm’s changing levels of risk under various strategies. Finally, it introduces an alternative method for analyzing business segments and strategies called Economic Profit Analysis EPA. We will discuss EPA’s key feature, “volatility replication,” an intuitively appealing process of building investor expectations and capital market information into the risk-and-return measurements used to evaluate strategic decisions. Finally, we will illustrate the benefit of using EPA in overcoming the problems of TCA and thereby providing concise reliable information for business decision making.

Description: Describes using the new multi-risk scenario generator to create sensitivity tests at moderately adverse probability levels, resulting in margins to use for PBR.

Description: This paper presents a new methodology for obtaining fast algorithms and closed form solutions for pricing callable bonds in continuous time models. Results are directly applicable to regulatory scenario testing, immunization and market value accounting.

Description: Presentation from the 41st Actuarial Research Conference held on August 10-12, 2006 in Montreal, Canada. Fuzzy set theory is incorporated into times series analysis, giving fuzzy parameter estimates of models such as ARMA and GARCH. Examples are given, including returns on a stock and option valuation.

Description: Modeling experience sharing by David Yu who leads the retirement product and asset model development team within Prudential Financial

Description: Looking for volunteer organizations to help Academy test new modeling techniques for PBR.

Description: Explores the open vs. closed systems debate with regards to actuarial modeling and exposes the over-simplification. Valuable for anyone who uses models.

Description: The article describes the key components of actuarial model, leading practices in designing them, and characteristics of well-built models.