Description: Article from The Actuary, September 1988, Volume 22, No. 8, where the Executive Committee and the Board of Governors of the Society of Actuaries reported significant actions taken at each of their respective meetings.

Description: Portability of pension benefits allows an employee to maintain pension benefits as he leaves one company and joins another. Advocates of portability point approvingly to the way Social Security - a portable pension plan - handles employee mobility. In their view, the private pension system would be fairer to participants and close a gap in pension coverage if it had more portability.

Description: Enclosed with this issue of The Actuary is a synopsis of the Report of the SOA Task Force on the Actuary of the Future, referred to in Gary Corbett’s presidential address last year.

Description: In 1983, a poultry virus hit the jackpot in Pennsylvania. While making a copy of its genetic material, the virus made a tiny error. Because of that error, it began producing a slightly altered protein which allowed the normally benign organism to spread beyond its usual residence in chicken lungs and intestines. Soon it was burrowing into other parts of the birds’ bodies - including the nervous system, where it multiplied rapidly and began to cause disease. Could something like this happen to humans?

Description: Final regulations imposing Continuing Professional Education CPE requirements for enrolled actuaries in the United States were promulgated recently by the Joint Board for the Enrollment of Actuaries. The Joint Board was established by federal law ERISA in 1974 to regulate pension actuaries. Certain pension actuarial certifications required by ERISA must be performed by an enrolled actuary As described below, the CPE requirements will cause some administrative inconvenience for enrolled actuaries but - with certain notable exceptions - will not affect our behavior.

Description: Description of program parameters for next year.

Description: Today's actuarial teams dedicate substantial time and resources to maintain strong frameworks for risk management and control. Current practices typically endure this as a sunken cost, yielding minimal value beyond SOX/MAR/COSO compliance and basic error prevention. With a small up-front time investment, and a willingness to approach these activities with an open mind, the functionality of existing compliance activities can be completely transformed. Compliance activities, once a sunken time cost, can be elevated to deliver more insightful analysis to stakeholders.

Description: This session is about the U. S. Social Security System undergoing a period of critical reappraisal with the costs and future of the system in question, and about how the actuarial profession should be involved in the process.

Description: Contained in Appendix 4 of the 1987 Valuation Actuary Handbook, this set of articles sets forth the positions of various industry groups with regard to the valuation actuary concept as of January 1987. It consists of four sections: 4.1 – Excerpts from the Report of the Task Force on the Valuation Actuary to the ACLI Board of Directors, August 1986 4.2 – Final Report of the Joint Committee on the Role of the Valuation Actuary in the United States 4.3 – Preliminary Report to NAIC Life & Health Actuarial Task Force from Surplus & Solvency Subcommittee of NAIC Standing Technical Advisory Committee, October 9-10, 1986 and 4.4 – Draft Recommendation 7 – American Academy of Actuaries paper. Views of the American Council of Life Insurance, ‘ACLI,’ the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, ‘NAIC,’ the American Academy of Actuaries, and the Society of Actuaries are all represented. Note that the final report in 4.2 above was adopted in 1984 by the boards of both the Academy and Society, the two organizations represented on the Joint Committee.

Description: In this paper, chapter V of the 1987 Valuation Actuary Handbook, the authors start with a discussion of how the recent economic environment with volatile interest rates has changed the valuation and surplus management process to one more dependent on actuarial judgment. In a discussion of surplus policy, the authors identify four “layers” of surplus which have been identified by scenario testing. These surplus layers, along with policy reserves, are based on specific invested assets. The paper discusses implications for the future and notes the actuary’s ability to advise management on surplus adequacy is a basic tool of risk management.