Description: This discussion explores lapse experience on business financed at or near issue through policy or bank loans, the amount such financed business is increasing or decreasing, and the extent the exercise of the Fifth Dividend Option in practice is being confined to policyholders interested in minimum deposit policies.

Description: Discussion of various group life and health insurance topics, including: A. Amount of group dental insurance being written and benefit provisions currently being offered and financial experiences of the coverages to date. B. Problems of professional association groups? C. Current level of interest in group paid-up or group permanent.

Description: This informal general discussion session was centered around ordinary insurance, the size of ordinary policies, mode of premium payment, and juvenile policies.

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.

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: 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: 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.