Description: Read the November 2019 issue of The Modeling Platform, published by the Modeling Section. Newsletters provide practical information for the working actuary, articles on trends that impact sections and news about section activities.

Description: The Introduction to Modeling: Summer Boot Camp series provides an overview of modeling topics and techniques aimed at the beginner modeler. This interactive series is comprised of five 90-minute sessions with opportunities to discuss the topics in small break-out groups.

Description: The article and guidebook of the same name use a stochastic simulation model to examine potential impacts of public pension plan risk-sharing policies on government employers and plan members. Policies examined include simple policies such as COLAs and employee contributions that are contingent upon investment returns or funded ratios, and more-complex policies similar to those used in the Wisconsin Retirement System.

Description: The following case study walks through the steps of a predictive modeling exercise to illustrate one way analytics can streamline the underwriting paradigm.

Description: Many seniors who own houses in the United States have most of their wealth in their houses. Home Equity Conversion Mortgages are designed to allow seniors to borrow money against their house. This paper describes a stochastic simulation approach used to estimate the amount of a level-payment annuity payable as long as the senior is alive and living in his/her home. From Actuarial Research Clearing House 1990, VOL. 2.

Description: This article provides an an alternate, statistical approach, to graduation. Both single and multiple decrement models are considered and theoretical results are obtained for some specific mortality models. From: ACTUARIAL RESEARCH CLEARING HOUSE, 1979 VOL. 2.

Description: This report describes a simple way to construct a bivariate copula with specified marginals and partially specified dependence. For example, the method allows one to model tail behavior scenarios while holding the core of the joint distribution fixed. An Excel workbook named CopulaExample.xls is provided to illustrate the method, including its use in Monte Carlo simulation.

Description: CMS has required hospitals to publish their chargemaster rates, cash discounts and negotiated rates as of January 1, 2021. Our panel is comprised of a data strategist, an executive from a large hospital system and an actuary.

Description: After more than a decade of a prolonged low interest rate environment, long-term Treasury rates have started to increase with higher volatility. While it is generally agreed that a modest increase in interest rates and inflation is beneficial to the life insurance industry, interest rate risk remains a significant challenge for life insurance industry to manage its long duration liabilities, especially under volatile interest rate environments. Learn how to proactively manage interest rate risk and improve capital efficiency through the cash flow based strategic asset allocation (SAA) framework. Discover practical examples of how to combine asset allocation with derivatives to manage tail risk and liability convexity.

Description: Commentary on practical observations resulting from constructing and running Economic Capital models. Possible standardization of assumptions and result interpretation are morphing even though use of E.C. models has now been around for years.