Description: Article discusses possible effects of negative interest rates on product development, risk management, investment management and in-force management.

Description: This article discusses sessions from the product development section post symposium seminar on product development - beginning to end. Sessions included product specific topics like term, universal life with secondary guarantees, and indexed products. Panel discussions included inforce management and advanced modeling issues.

Description: The objective of this article is to help indexed annuity writers understand the pricing practices and ALM strategies used by their peers in the industry, especially in light of the prevailing low interest rate environment and a possible rise in interest rates.

Description: New Zealand is about to launch its first variable annuity with guaranteed lifetime withdrawal benefits. The product design is mindful of the lessons from the financial crisis in the United States, Europe and Japan.

Description: A 2015 Society of Actuaries Report (co-sponsored by the Reinsurance Section, Product Development Section, and Committee on Life Insurance Research) entitled “Life and Annuity Living Benefit Riders: Considerations for Insurers and Reinsurers,” is available on the Society of Actuaries website (www.soa.org). It covers a wide range of living benefit riders with medically-related triggers on life or annuity products. This article is largely derived from that report, covering several of those riders. In order to add to the marketing implications of these plans, Claude Thau, in his capacity as President of Thau, Inc. has provided additional commentary from the perspective of a marketer who is active in this field.

Description: The article summarizes three papers presented at the 2014 Living to 100 Symposium V, which was hosted by the SOA in Orlando in January 2014. The papers take three different views of retirement saving: the individual's, the insurance provider's and a wholesale risk management view. David Blanchett of Morningstar proposes a new model to assess the true cost of retirement, Moshe Milevsky proposes a new product concept based on the nearly forgotten tontine and Johnny Li proposes a new set of mortality indices based on the Cairns-Blake-Dowd projection model for the purpose of actively managing mortality and longevity risk.

Description: Read the June 2017 issue of Product Matters published by the Product Development Section. Newsletters provide practical information for the working actuary, articles on trends that impact sections and news about section activities.

Description: Six years after the global financial crisis, the reshaped contours of the market for the life insurance industry are coming into focus.

Description: The Delphi method was applied to several questions regarding trends in product development. The audience participated in the Delphi survey to predict how economic and demographic factors will impact pricing over the next 7 years.

Description: Top down approach to retirement results in wasting the human capital of retirees. We should concentrate, instead on allowing our clients to use their human capital to the fullest extent possible, and structure retirement products around that premise.