Description: Lillian Dittrick’s strategic analytics team at UnityPoint Health® has developed an application to automatically cull unstructured doctors’ notes in electronic medical records. Dittrick’s team is part of a strategic analytics department that did not exist three years ago. UnityPoint Health®, one of the nation’s largest nonprofit health systems, has assembled a team of people who use advanced analytics to build more complete patient risk stratification models by mining claims, clinical and social determinant data in new ways.

Description: Career changes typically follow a major milestone—a promotion, a job offer, a new degree, maybe a cross-country move. For Patrick Getzen, exposure to some new perspectives ignited a shift.

Description: This presentation is a panel discussion from the 1991 Annual Meeting of the Society of Actuaries, held October 20-23 in Toronto. The panelists discuss the current life insurance company merger and acquisition environment, and determining the value of a life insurance company. Topics include the actuarial valuation methodology, including the just adopted actuarial standard of practice, investment analyst valuation, and the risks associated with change of control. Discussion from participants is included. From the Record of Society of Actuaries, Volume 17, No. 4B.

Description: This paper presents a generalization of the principal current methods of financial decision making. In the way physical sciences benefit from new general theories that encompass those theories they succeed, the science of finance can benefit from the development of a general framework that encompasses many of the current methods of financial analysis. The paper develops a general framework for financial decision-making from a few simple axioms of rational economic behavior.

Description: Although rate structures where low-cost cohorts subsidize high cost cohorts may be justified from a actuarial, marketing, or legal standpoint, the subsidization creates risks which must be understood and monitored. This article presents the concept of subsidization signature to measure and interpret the effects of rate subsidization, and to assess the sustainability of rating structures and the sensitivity of business mix assumptions.

Description: Presentation of proposals that are designed to further improve actuarial education by anticipating educational needs based on future change in the nature of actuarial work. The paper is divided into three sections: I. Current and Past Education of Actuaries II. Actuaries as Customers for Education and III. The Future Educational Needs of Actuaries and How These Needs Might Be Implemented. Followed by several submitted discussion papers.

Description: This e-book contains topical essays that express the opinions and thoughts of a number of authors on the subject. It should be understood that the thoughts and insights shared herein are the opinion of the authors and not necessarily those of the Society of Actuaries, the Casualty Actuarial Society, the Canadian Institute of Actuaries, or corresponding employers of the essayists.

Description: From the 1985 Valuation Actuary Symposium. A discussion of the principles that should be part of a life insurance valuation. Also discussion of emerging actuarial professional standards of practice and regulatory requirements with respect to methodology for assessing reserve adequacy.