Description: This presentation is a Teaching Session, number 38TS, from the 1999 Valuation Actuary Symposium, held September 23-24 in Los Angeles. The instructors provide an introduction into how complex adaptive systems [CAS] can be applied to solve actuarial problems. They provide a general overview of CAS, including genetic algorithms, neural network, nonlinear modeling, and agent-based modeling, provide recent examples of applications to business problems, and discuss how CAS approaches can be used to address actuarial pricing and valuation issues, such as modeling customer behavior. Discussion from participants is included.

Description: This presentation is a panel discussion, session number 34PD, from the 2002 Valuation Actuary Symposium, held September 19-20 in Lake Buena Vista, FL. A fundamental step in stochastic asset/liability modeling is to choose an appropriate underlying economic scenario generator. In this session, panelists discuss various scenario generation techniques and theories, assumptions underlying interest and equity scenario generators, and choosing suitable economic scenario generators for different applications, the two most common being pricing models [for assets and liabilities], and risk analysis models, used for asset/liability management, investment strategy, regulatory solvency, and capital adequacy. Discussion from participants is included.

Description: This session 99PD of the New Orleans Annual Meeting summary: Insurers today are looking for new ways to use currently available experience data to better predict future costs. Both the federal and state governments are looking at the possibility of using prescription drug data because it is more available and often of higher quality than other experience data. From the Record of the Society of Actuaries, Volume 27, No. 3, Session 99PD.

Description: This article offers a critique of explanatory text and principal economic and demographic assumption tables from the 2003 Annual report of the Board of Trustees of the OASDI Trust Fund. From Pension Section News, March 2004, Issue No. 54.

Description: This article talks about the role that models played in the subprime meltdown and the subsequent crisis in the financial markets in general. The models failed to provide information about the magnitude of potential 'black swans'. Extreme Value Theory [EVT] is described as a potential solution to this error.

Description: Learn about business Analytics in Insurance - Practical case studies and implementation.

Description: The following topics were discussed at concurrent sessions: 1. Personal Security in the 1970's- United States and Canada, 2. Adjusted earnings for life companies, 3. Pension funding, 4. What about these younger actuaries?, 5. Sources of statistical information for actuaries, 6. Variable life insurance, 7. Models and decision techniques, and 8. Role of the actuary in expense control. From Transactions of Society of Actuaries 1970, Vol 22, Pt. 2, No. 63.

Description: This report summarizes the key findings and data points from the selected articles. Included for each article are the report’s abstract along with any empirical data available from the study that can help support an actuarial model that identifies the relationship between lifestyle behaviors, health risk conditions and health outcomes.

Description: This is a brief on a publication intended to serve as an in-depth primer on economic scenario generators.

Description: U.K. life insurers writing participating business are required by the Financial Services Authority to value their assets and liabilities on a market-consistent basis. The purpose of this paper is to: • Explain the valuation approach based on market-consistent values and its rationale. • Set out the issues faced by life insurers in implementing the regime. • Explain how insurers addressed these issues. • Explain the importance of the modeling techniques they used.