Description: Purchase GAAP for Equity-Indexed Annuities

Description: Discussion rebutting the Dec. 2004 issue of The Financial Reporter article titled, “On the Fair Value of Insurance Liabilities,” authored by Don Solow. That article expressed disagreement with the position of the International Accounting Standards Board and the Financial Accounting Standards Board to reflect the value of “own credit risk” in the fair valuation of insurance liabilities.

Description: A review of Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, including a review of the need for life and health insurance actuaries to review and, in most cases, substantially strengthen their internal controls over financial reporting.

Description: This is a continuation of a discussion about the the theoretically correct treatment of the credit put the policyholder writes when purchasing an insurance contract.

Description: An Overview of Embedded Value and its uses, its advantages versus other financial reporting methodologies, recent trends and an outlook into the future.

Description: The article described two methods for calculating the benefit ratio described in AICPA Standard of Practice SOP 03-1. Method 1 calculates the benefit ratio as the quotient of the expectation of A and the expectation of B where A is benefits and B is assessments. Method 2 calculates the benefit ratio as the expectation of the quotient of A and B.

Description: A discussion of a possible replacement of FASB Statement No. 141 SFAS 141. The exposure draft was referred to in this article as “141R.” “141R” provides guidance for application of the acquisition method, which was previously called the purchase method in the case of business combinations. The draft requires that all business combinations including the merger of mutual insurance companies be accounted for by the acquisition method.

Description: A discussion of European CFO Embedded Value Guidelines

Description: Discusses new thinking in regards to risk margins, in the context of fair value and principle-based reporting.

Description: Presents a practical solution to some of the distortion caused by a typical application of the retrospective assumption update (unlocking) method.