Description: Discussion of how to mature value-based contracts between health insurers and provider organizations to improve population health and financial sustainability. Centers around contract parameter consistency, revenue predictability and risk assessment. Intended audience are health plan and ACO actuaries and leaders. Authors are writing from the provider perspective in value-based contracts.

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: Mental health, suppoting policyholders

Description: Discussion of the ways carriers can deliver a direct to consumer offering in a way that benefits, rather than alienates, the advisor channel.

Description: In this article, we describe new approaches to long-term care financing that rely on home equity release and we address several of the challenges mentioned above. While these approaches stand to help expand the potential for long-term care financing to middle-class Americans, even these approaches don’t address a large swath of the U.S. with less privilege, who have little or no home equity. We will discuss the product design, marketing, pricing and risk management of these new approaches and potential behavioral factors that should be considered. The article builds on a growing body of academic research to which the authors have actively contributed. We want to share the key insights of this international work in market research, economics, and actuarial studies to stimulate more research in this area.

Description: Most industry professionals acknowledge that funding retirement needs will almost always require disciplined savings over a period of decades. Today, we are less than 30 years from the second half of the 21st Century. However, a majority of the Millennial and Gen Z generations are either not eligible for or are not using today's tax-preferred options for funding retiree medical and Long Term Care (LTC).

Description: Blockchain technology has the potential to significantly improve the quality of life and overall health of the members of a health system, while also adding to administrative efficiencies. For the first time, we will have access to members’ entire diagnoses and prescription history, consumer behavioral attributes, and other socio-economic determinants which that are valuable inputs to designing appropriate benefits and proper care management plans. Through the blockchain, we will be able to access data not just of the existing members of the health system but also of potential enrollees and new entrants. The data can be accessed by querying the blockchain through a permissioned granted by the member. This information can be very useful in performing feasibility studies for evaluating entry into newer markets and/or newer products, developing customized care plans, and designing efficient value-based contracts. By executing smart contracts on the blockchain, we will be able to achieve administrative efficiencies like never before. The applications of blockchain technology are numerous and ground-breaking. Organizations that do not pay heed to the benefits that blockchain can bring may find themselves left behind as the rest of the industry marches forward in its quest for efficiency and member satisfaction.

Description: Will the Medicare Modernization Act Jump Start Growth in Employer-Sponsored Long- Term Care Insurance? by Allen J. Schmitz, FSA and Scott A. Weltz, FSA from Long-Term Care Newsletter, April 2004, Issue No. 11.

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: This article was written to increase the knowledge and insights of both the direct writer and reinsurer in optimizing the reinsurance negotiation process. It should help the reinsurer offer a more competitive quote and hence win a share in a reinsurance pool while simultaneously helping the direct writer obtain lower reinsurance costs helping their product pricing and bottom line.