Description: The implementation of the IFRS 17 insurance accounting standard has brought significant changes to the financial reporting landscape of insurance companies. With new disclosure requirements and altered profit analysis, understanding and interpreting future profitability have become a topic of concern for the industry. While stability remains a key objective for insurance companies, the earning patterns might become more volatile especially when the contractual service margin (CSM) is exhausted, and a loss component (LC) needs to be established. Reinsurance, a common risk mitigation tool, can play a pivotal role in managing earnings volatility and minimizing losses for onerous measurement units. In this article, we propose a new key performance indicator (KPI) called “loss recoverability” to assess the performance of reinsurance treaties in achieving these objectives. We explain how this KPI can be utilized in multiple scenarios to evaluate the effectiveness of reinsurance strategies and pursue stability in earning patterns.

Description: Predicting mortality (or longevity) and measuring the associated risk are the keys to the success of insurance business. Underwriting has been used for years for this purpose and approved effective. Currently, underwriting has been focusing on human physical conditions such as BMI, blood sample, medical history, and others, as well as severe mental diseases; occasionally, there are mental health assessments such as mental illness or cognitive testing that have been used in underwriting Life or Long-Term Care (LTC) business.

Description: The Society of Actuaries Research Institute’s Aging and Retirement Strategic Research Program is pleased to make available a report that explores stakeholder views in Minnesota on the efficacy of a public catastrophic long-term care insurance program at the state level.

Description: The SOA Research Institute seeks researchers and essayists to explore the multifaceted impacts of climate risk on retirement. The desired deliverable is a resource that catalogues major related issues while providing current considerations and potential future dynamics. The intended audience for this effort is actuaries and other retirement professionals.

Description: State Medicaid agencies have been implementing value-based payment (VBP) models for the last decade and are increasingly exploring advanced population-based payment (PBP) models that increase flexibility, predictability, and accountability for participating provider organizations. PBP models show promise in advancing Medicaid priorities, but are still in the early stages of development, and model design and implementation challenges remain. This article from the Center for Health Care Strategies explores the fundamentals of VBP and how PBP - a particular type of payment model - can help Medicaid agencies achieve goals related to care transformation and quality improvement, revenue stability, and controlling cost of care.

Description: The strategic plan of the Society of Actuaries (SOA) Research Institute includes several important research goals. One goal is to support emerging issues and topics in established practice areas and encourage the development of research projects that have a strong impact on the actuarial profession. The primary purpose is to select and fund high-quality research projects that directly educate members on applicable topics. Additionally, the SOA Research Institute desires to develop additional intellectual capital that serves the interest of the public and the profession’s stakeholders. The Research Executive Committee (REC) of the SOA Research Institute oversees the funding of the Emerging Issues Pool. This key source of research funding is used to sponsor projects that are beneficial to the entire profession, across practice area boundaries that may require funding levels beyond the normal annual funding budgets of research committees and sections. The REC is issuing this Request for Proposals (RFP) to fulfill the strategic goals of the organization through the use of this pool for funding new projects.

Description: In the United States, individuals needing long-term services and supports (LTSS) access care, utilize services, and pay for their services in various ways. The authors explore how the need for, utilization of and payment for long-term services and supports differ in the U.S. by population cohorts. Their primary focus is disparity by race and ethnicity, but they also consider variations by geography, family structure, age, sex, gender and other socioeconomic factors.

Description: Product complexity, the services provided by distributors, their method of obtaining clients, and their relationship to insurers all affect the characteristics of in force membership.

Description: This article is a summary of the SOA Research Institute report published in April 2023 on Megatrends Impacting the Future of Retirement Plans.

Description: The article summarizes the results of the 2022 U.S. and Canadian Life Reinsurance Survey, for both Individual Life and Group Life business, conducted by the Reinsurance Section of the Society of Actuaries.