Description: The Marketing and Distribution Section initiated a multi-phase research effort to better understand the middle market for life insurance and to identify segments that would allow the industry to better target customer needs. Supported by the Committee on Life Insurance Research, Product Development and Reinsurance Sections, the phase one research examined young families between the ages of 25 and 40 with household income of $35K-$125K and who have individual life insurance or financial dependents. This summarizes the results of this study and is authored by Dr. Walter Zultowski of WZ Research + Consulting and Dr. Brian Perlman of Mathew Greenwald & Associates.

Description: Initiated by the Product Development Section, this report examines global product development (PD) practices of life insurance and annuity companies.

Description: Initiated by the Product Development Section, this report examines global product development (PD) practices of life insurance and annuity companies.

Description: This is a discussion about smaller companies and the pros and cons of competing with larger companies. From Transactions of Society of Actuaries 1962, Vol. 14 Pt. 2

Description: This research report on the effect of deflation or high inflation has six sections: 1. The first section provides background on inflation, describes some problems in measuring inflation, and explains some of its effects on an economy. 2. The second section reviews historical inflation rates. 3. The third section examines the effect of inflation or deflation on the property-liability and life insurance industries. 4. The fourth section proposes risk mitigation strategies for insurers to cope with either deflation or high inflation rates. 5. The fifth section describes a publicly available model that can be used to develop inflation/deflation projections under a regime switching format that can readily be adjusted to reflect current financial uncertainty. 6. The sixth section provides conclusions.

Description: Survey of post level term lapse and mortality assumptions for level term premium plans.

Description: This report describes the results of the latest intercompany study of mortality experience under Structured Settlement annuities.

Description: Initiated by the Financial Reporting Section, this paper explores rising interest rates. Following this path, the paper will look at implications of interest rate changes for the life insurance industry, current stress testing practices, and how a risk manager can proactively prepare for an uncertain future. A paper published in 2014 focused on why rates could stay low, and some aspects of this paper are similar (e.g., description of insurance products). This paper also uses a sample model office to help practitioners look at their own exposures. It includes typical interest-sensitive insurance products and how they might perform across various scenarios, as well as a survey to establish current practices for how insurers are testing interest rate risk currently.

Description: The COVID-19 (COVID) pandemic has increased the demand for data and analysis on the impact of COVID on U.S. population mortality. This report is based on 2020 provisional death data released by the CDC. The SOA plans to update this report after additional 2020 cause of death data in released by the CDC later in 2021.

Description: This paper concerns policyholder dividends on traditional participating life insurance products in regulatory contexts similar to those in the United States and Canada. This paper also touches on annuity products. It was prepared for use in the educational curriculum of the Society of Actuaries. Dividend actuaries seeking references to writings on policyholder dividends to refresh their perspective may also find it useful.