Description: The article “IFRS 17, Economic Volatility, and Reinsurance” (IFRS 17, Economic Volatility, and Reinsurance | SOA) was designated the best article published in Reinsurance News in 2022. It looks at providing industry insights on preparing for the new global accounting standard. The article was submitted by Paul Sauvé (RGA) and it appeared in the June 2022 issue.

Description: The implementation of the IFRS 17 insurance accounting standard has brought significant changes to the financial reporting landscape of insurance companies. With new disclosure requirements and altered profit analysis, understanding and interpreting future profitability have become a topic of concern for the industry. While stability remains a key objective for insurance companies, the earning patterns might become more volatile especially when the contractual service margin (CSM) is exhausted, and a loss component (LC) needs to be established. Reinsurance, a common risk mitigation tool, can play a pivotal role in managing earnings volatility and minimizing losses for onerous measurement units. In this article, we propose a new key performance indicator (KPI) called “loss recoverability” to assess the performance of reinsurance treaties in achieving these objectives. We explain how this KPI can be utilized in multiple scenarios to evaluate the effectiveness of reinsurance strategies and pursue stability in earning patterns.

Description: The ASU 2018-12 guidance, otherwise known as long-duration targeted improvements (LDTI), establishes a significant new category of benefit features called market risk benefits (MRB) that protect the contractholder from other-than-nominal capital market risk and expose the insurer to that risk. Insurers will have to measure market risk benefits at fair value. There are a few examples of MRB, Including the most common one— MGxBs on variable and indexed annuities. This change may bring significant volatility to earnings of these GMxB policies that are currently valued under the insurance accrual model (such as SOP 03-1). How to analyze the changes in volatility in MRBs became the natual question for many companies that haven't been valuing them on fair value basis. Besides the GMxBs, have you wondered when or if the guaranteed annuitization options offered by your company have other-than-norminal risk? By attending the session, you will: · Understand different types of MRBs. · Learn about ways to analyze the changes in volatility in MRBs from SOP 03-1. · Understand the accounting of MRB change for a contract under reinsurance going through spread and liability assumption updates. · Understand when the guaranteed annuitization options become MRB and how to evaluate that.

Description: The adoption and implementation of LDTI represents a significant change for insurers. There are major shifts in the the financial statements and required disclosures. Insurers are faced with a variety of decisions, including at what level to present disclosures (i.e., segment level or lower), how to format the disclosures, and what to include in the qualitative disclosures. Focus on the end to end journey of disclosure generation from model output to general ledger to published financials. By attending the session, you will: Describe the new required disclosures, understand the data elements that will be used in the disclosures, and comprehend the available technology solutions to produce the required disclosures.

Description: Edited Content: Discover more about key Economic Scenario Generation (ESG) topics that are relevant for actuarial applications. Expect a focus on risk-neutral / market-consistent ESGs, like setting long term assumptions and scenario reduction. Long tern assumptions will focus on a basic introduction to challenges in deriving long term assumptions and key concepts to better understand how those are set. Come explore a basic overview of scenario reduction techniques and challenges as well as common sense criteria to address the reasonableness of the reduction. Provided Content: The overall objective would be to introduce key ESG (Economic Scenario Generation) topics to actuaries, with two topics below that are relevant for actuarial applications. We intend to focus on risk-neutral / market-consistent ESGs. 1. Setting long term assumptions o A basic introduction to challenges in deriving long term assumptions and key concepts to better understand how those are set 2. Scenario reduction o A basic overview of scenario reduction techniques and challenges as well as common sense criteria to address the reasonableness of the reduction

Description: Gain insight into lessons learned from VM-20 implementation and recent regulatory updates such as the introduction of future mortality improvement (FMI), changes to the economic scenario generator (ESG), and the recently adopted AG AAT. By attending the session, you will: •Have a high-level overview of recent VM-20 updates and hot topics, such FMI and ESG updates•Understand the challenges presented by PBR implementation, and the implications of performing multiple critical and required system updates simultaneously•Improve your understanding of the development and implications of the AG AAT

Description: As the size of the life reinsurance market in Bermuda has grown to over half a trillion dollars at the end of 2021, more and more actuaries are getting involved with this 21 square mile North Atlantic island in one way or the other. Come explore a fundamental understanding of the Bermuda solvency framework and an overview of its upcoming changes.

Description: ALM and hedging can reap significant benefits from innovation in computation and operations research. Explore applications of static and dynamic optimization in two different ALM and hedging use cases. Insurers are increasingly moving offshore by establishing Bermuda captive reinsurers. In calculating the Bermuda Best Estimate Liability ('BEL'), reinsurers will need to segment assets to support liabilities in each treaty. A Linear Programming ('LP') problem can be formulated to tactically select assets in a way that minimizes the BEL and consequently the total asset requirement. Learn more about what US Variable Annuity Insurers face with the regulatory requirement to reflect 'future hedging strategy' in their statutory funding calculation. The traditional numerical method of finding the optimal hedging target and then allocating assets may encounter the curse of dimensionality with expanding product and economic environment complexity. A Reinforcement Learning algorithm may well fit this problem and provide insurers a solution for dynamic hedging.

Description: Interest Maintenance Reserve ("IMR") has become a hot topic recently due to rising interest rates, causing decreases or even negative IMR balances for some insurers. This article aims to exam some new questions facing financial reporting actuaries: - How should negative IMR be treated for statutory reporting? - What are the other actuarial implications of negative IMR? - What have regulators done and/or plan to do about negative IMR? - What are potential mitigants?

Description: Actuaries can leverage cluster modeling to reduce model runtime and cloud compute costs, which can be a real concern as companies transition from an on-premise grid to a scalable cloud solution. We consider practical considerations associated with clustering, through both US statutory and US GAAP lenses. Lastly, the results from a variable annuity liability clustering case study are presented.