Description: Recent health care reform activity has highlighted the importance of Clinical Integration in improving the quality, safety, efficiency and reimbursement infrastructure of the health care system. This article discusses relevance and implication of regulatory measures, implementation and data issues, and provides an end-to-end example.

Description: The different broad purposes served by the material change concept under federal tax law are outlined. More specific material change and similar issues that are pertinent to particular Code provisions and guidance from the IRS that has addressed those issues are also addressed. In the final part of this article, authors comment on whether any overarching principles can be gleaned that can assist insurers and policy owners in making decisions about whether particular changes can safely be made, and thoughts are offered with respect to future potential IRS guidance that would be helpful as taxpayers navigate these often uncertain waters.

Description: Why and how to set up an advance directive, in case a health event renders you unable to make your own medical to decisions.

Description: Highlights and discussion of "Stretching the Corridor: The Effects of Extended Rate Stabilization on Defined Benefit Plan Funding Requirements." The report, produced by the SOA Data-drive In-House Research function, analyzed the effects of extending the pension funding stabilization provisions that were implemented with MAP-21 in 2012.

Description: Financial institutions have and continue to suffer substantial financial losses because of their exposures to various operational risks and insufficient risk management. Quantifying operational risk is a critical component of an institution’s ability to manage risk. The model described in the article provides a numerical measure for operational risks existing in a business entity through statistical methods. It takes experience data to reflect both the general features and company specifics of the defined operational risks, while also allowing for managerial discretion. An important achievement is to suggest a level of capital to hold against potential losses arising from operational risks.

Description: This article contains a summary of some of the Product Development Section presentations given at the 2017 SOA Annual Meeting & Exhibit in Boston this past October.

Description: Discusses cost-benefit decision-making for acquiring electronic data-processing equipment and installation issues, ability of small companies to compete in pension trust arena, effectiveness of various agency compensation programs in stimulating sales and improving persistency, success of sales to substandard risks and rating methods, and pricing, reinsurance and experience with individual hospital and medical policies.

Description: A sound enterprise risk management (ERM) framework functions as an ecosystem by balancing the interdependencies of its elements while constantly adapting to an ever‐changing, external environment. Each stakeholder has a unique role to play in forming a thriving ERM ecosystem by integrating risk‐conscientiousness in decision‐making. A resilient ERM framework has a single well‐ understood risk language and culture to promote healthy risk‐taking behaviors. The central focus of such a framework is concentrated around all stakeholders and everyone is held accountable. Every day, external forces can potentially disrupt how we operatively conduct business. Unforeseen changes in regulation, market trends, terrorist’s attacks and extreme natural disasters are often categorized as extremely adverse. How then will your ERM ecosystem survive the one‐in‐200 event and continue to flourish through dynamically changing environments?

Description: This article provides a detailed description of the unbalanced subsidy provisions in the Affordable Care Act with easy to follow numerical illustrations. An understanding of the illustrative calculations is necessary to understand the subsidy implications. The article highlights some surprising and likely unintended results that will be interest to issuers, employers, consumers, regulators and policymakers. Actuaries can add expertise to their clients and to the public discussion with a proper understanding of the subsidy calculations and the resulting implications.

Description: The costly, time-consuming and complicated process of enterprise risk management (ERM) can be improved in many companies and made less tedious for managers by using reasonable data and templates obtained from peer group entities. The models used to calculate economic capital (EC) often underestimate its value because they do not consider decision-maker perception about risk. We assume here that managers, as the decision-makers, have appropriate business understanding and they can provide substantial information about risk characteristics regarding all business processes. Therefore we are focused, in this paper, on collecting data from managers across the different businesses to derive the appropriate knowledge about risky events, the importance of particular types of risk, the relationship between the risk outcomes and the level of risk control in a particular industry. We conclude that the collected data has a high potential for use as a benc hmarking reference and analysis for improving ERM models for individual businesses.