Description: This discussion explores actuarial assumptions for interest, mortality and disability. From Transactions of Society of Actuaries 1961, Vol. 13, Pt. 2.

Description: Report on the first study conducted jointly by LIMRA International and the SOA Long Term Care Experience Committee. The study examines voluntary lapse and total termination activity in LTCI for calendar years 2000 and 2001. Overall, the results indicate that LTCI persistency has continued to improve however, the current improvement seems to be coming from the individual lines of business rather than the group lines.

Description: A discussion of the various Pension Plan Asset Valuation Methods. FromThe Pension Forum, August 2001, Volume 13, Issue No. 1.

Description: Capital Market Assumptions—The Past Performance Future Returns Debate by Jane Arnold and Jennifer Donnelly from Pension Section News, November 1998, Issue No. 38.

Description: This article describes a simplified problem in pension plan financing and presents two questions about how it can be modeled. Answers to these questions will be discussed and their implications for traditional actuarial models will be presented in Part 2 of the article in the following issue of the newsletter.

Description: Part 2 of an article which presents simplified problem and and presented alternate models. Answers are presented in this article. The author's final question is: If traditional actuarial models stumble over these issues, can we get it right for real world funding pension plans and funding practices?

Description: In the U.S. in the late 1980’s, the Internal Revenue Service was taking steps to try to institute explicit boundaries for the actuarial assumptions being used in 'funding' valuations to determine the appropriate contribution levels for small pension plans. This article was written in the context of that environment, to defend the rights of actuaries to their professional judgement. The courts eventually supported this perspective.

Description: 1993 SOA Spring Meeting, San Diego. This session discussed the proposed standards for determining the economic assumptions for the purposes of measuring pension obligations. The actuary's determination of the interest rate assumption was the primary focus of the discussion.

Description: These discussions at the 1967 New York and New Orleans Regional Meetings are about considerations in choosing interest assumptions and challenges presented when comparing investment yields among companies.

Description: This paper presents a methodology that represents the common ground between the major camps in the debate over the defined benefits DB system.