Description: The article warns against treating the results of a stochastic model with more deference than other actuarial analysis, and describes some hidden risks involved with choice of model and calibration.

Description: In computing actuarial measurements, such as the moments of present value functions for insurance and annuities, the stochastic nature of the interest rate is commonly ignored. This paper treats the interest rate as a normal random variable and presents general formulas for the mean and variance of the present value function for insurance and annuities. An example demonstrating these formulas is presented. It is found that taking the force of interest to be fixed at a mean value results in slightly underestimating the actuarial present value along with the variance for both insurance and annuities.

Description: The research investigates the challenges associated with determining a “fair value” assessment for embedded options in two product types and incorporates the process into product pricing and liability valuation

Description: 1998 Valuation Actuary Symposium. The panelists discussed how asset liability management is synonymous with a dynamic financial analysis and quantitative risk management. Topics covered were systems implementations including asset risk exposure optimization given a company-specific set of liabilities and total risk exposure optimization, which includes stochastic analysis of alternative asset and liability strategies.

Description: This report is sponsored by the Society of Actuaries in collaboration with Ernst & Young. It examines the application of stochastic modeling techniques to non-market risks facing the life insurance industry.

Description: Prior work indicates that a regime-switching stochastic model with randomized regime parameters creates a more plausible set of extreme paths than do the usual stochastic interest rate models. Generalizing the Black-Karasinski model by randomizing the mean reversion target provides an example. Better to understand such models, as well as to calibrate their parameters without trial and error runs of a stochastic model, this paper uses an asymptotic expansion to estimate the moments of the integrated stochastic process over time. Mention is made of a family of related asymptotic expansions that could be of wider interest.

Description: Read the April 2020 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: 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: This paper presents some preliminary results of an analysis of data from a regional municipality in Ontario to assess long term care risks. The data includes information on the optimal level of care at one or more points in time for each individual under study modelled using a Markov process.

Description: Annual reports of the U.S. Social Security Trustees present 75-year financial projections of the system under three different deterministic sets of economic and demographic assumptions or scenarios. The extent of the divergence between these scenarios provides useful information concerning the range of possible outcomes, but, in the absence of stochastic model projections, no probability measure can be assigned to the three scenarios, apart from being described as intermediate, low-cost and high-cost. Demographic research and stochastic model forecasts of U.S. population suggest plausible hypotheses for analysis of the divergence characteristics of the actuarial solvency ratios implied by the three deterministic scenarios. Available data from the 2002 Trustees’ report are presented and various statistical measures are developed to aid in the assessment of plausible associated probability measures for the scenario projections.