Description: Purchase GAAP for Equity-Indexed Annuities

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: Discussion of the sensitivity of GAAP reserves to certain assumptions made and methodologies used. Followed by a discussion paper

Description: Examination of how mean reserve factors can best be calculated in light of the new accounting reporting requirements for the earnings of stock life insurance companies. Also examines some methods of expense amortization, including the reserve factor method, and also attempt to show an informative comparison of how reported calendar-year earnings can be expected to emerge with statutory mean reserve factors, natural mean reserve factors, and assorted expense amortization methods. Followed by several submitted discussion papers

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

Description: The report begins with Tan's paper Source-of-Earnings Analysis under FAS97 Universal Life Accounting that defines a procedure for analyzing the sources of profit. This paper extends the analysis to consider the effect of actual experience varying from expected and the effect of those variances on assumptions for the future. Also the paper illustrates examples of the effect of changing future assumptions or unlocking on the magnitude and incidence of profits and amortization. A discussion of the paper follows. From Transactions of Society of Actuaries 1990, Vol. 42.

Description: The use of Other Comprehensive Income OCI is receiving its moment in the sun. It is being considered for housing some of the earnings volatility in the International Accounting Standards Board IASB current approach to measuring insurance contracts’ performance.

Description: Various methods of accounting for a block of in-force business acquired at the time of purchase have been proposed and used. This paper describes nine such methods, analyzing each by the use of a very simple model office. Followed by submitted discussions of the article

Description: From a session at the 2001 Valuation Actuary Symposium, held in Lake Buena Vista, Florida, November 29-30, 2001 Presents questions to actuaries who are experts in the field of actuarial valuation of insurance company assets and liabilities.