Description: This paper examines several methods for dynamically adjusting expense assets to reflect differences between actual and expected persistency. Discussions of the paper are included.

Description: This is a panel discussion session examining the complaints of life insurance consumers. The subjects include readability of contracts, risk classification methods, variety of product including the meaning of product names- what does the customer think he/she is buying or has bought, perceived lack of competition,

Description: Over the past few years, the Internal Revenue Service has issued two private letter rulings waiving the failure of certain fixed-premium universal life insurance FPUL contracts to satisfy the guideline premium test GPT under section 7702 of the Internal Revenue Code [see PLR 200328027 Apr. 10, 2003 and PLR 200230037 Apr. 30, 2002].

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: Description of general tax consequences of purchasing an insurance company, either through buying the assets or buying the stock.

Description: Discussion of a New York Times article dealing with the arbitraging of policy loan proceeds by investing them in money market instruments whose yields were well above the policy loan interest rate.

Description: Mortality Table Slope and Future Improvements

Description: This article contains a summary of some of the presentations given at the May 2013 SOA Life & Annuity Symposium. This article does not cover all sessions that are related to product development, but shares observations that have been made by various members of the SOA Product Development Section Council.

Description: Formulas for changes in GAAP liabilities and liability accrual rates are shown for three assumption update methods—retrospective, prospective and immediate.

Description: This article describes methods for addressing technical challenges related to modeling asset cash flows for PBR reserve projections.