Description: Presented at June 1996 Spring Meeting. This discussion looks at redirecting the traditional role of the actuary into new areas such as working with doctors to deal with medical management issues, dealing and negotiating with providers and how to help the company develop a provider payment strategy. Employers negotiating directly with providers is also discussed.

Description: Presented at May 2002 Spring Meeting. Discusses recent changes in the Actuarial Opinion and Memorandum Regulation, the ways in which the new requirements can be fulfilled, and the use of asset-adequacy analysis in other areas of the company.

Description: 1987 Valuation Actuary Handbook: Chapter 1: Addresses life insurance company statutory reserve valuation.

Description: In physics and engineering education, Fermi problems require solutions based on good approximate calculations with little or no actual data, involving making justified guesses and deducing bounds without using sophisticated tools. The idea of Fermi problems are of particular relevance to today's actuaries, as pricing, reserving, and financial reporting involve more and more complex stochastic components. The paper discusses some approximate solutions developed in academia in the spirit of Fermi problems.

Description: On October 30, 2015, the SOA Assumption Development and Governance Group, an informal discussion group consisting of nearly 200 interested actuaries with topics pertaining to actuarial assumption development and governance, organized an industry discussion call on end-to-end assumption documentation practices. The purpose of this call was to generate a large list of ideas for best-practice assumption documentation. More than thirty companies were represented in the call, including direct insurers, reinsurers and consulting firms. This article is the work product of the discussion written by Laurie Li and Alex Zaidlin.

Description: This article describes some of the drawbacks to the assessment of longevity risk adopted by most practitioners within the UK together with an initiative that provides a platform for an alternative approach that is both (a) more forward-looking in nature and (b) can complement current practices.

Description: Presented at May 2002 Spring Meeting. Discusses changes to reserving and tax regulations and the implications they have on product development.

Description: Discussion of a Society of Actuaries research report on cost comparison methods life insurance sales illustration support, prepared at the request of the NAIC

Description: This newsletter column by the Modeling Section Chair reflects on his attendance at the 2015 Actuarial Research Conference in Toronto and the relationships between practicing actuaries in industry and those in academia, and specifically those involved in research. How can we help promote academics research that is effective and relevant for practical use? Hopefully the Modeling Section might facilitate that effort.