Description: This session from the 1992 Valuation Actuary Symposium discusses cash-flow testing and looks at the sensitivity of key assumptions including interest rates, policyholder lapsation and asset cash flow.

Description: The impetus for this paper is a concern that a unification of pricing, valuation, and management-basis financials may be essential to ensure the viability of life insurance companies in the variable economic environment of the foreseeable future, which will have serious effects on interest-sensitive products. The paper offers hypotheses on which any unification should be based. The proposed unification is structured on an equity capital management approach and on a variation of the level-return-on-equity accounting method. Discussions of this paper are included.

Description: From session 75CS at the Spring regional meeting of the Society of Actuaries held in Atlanta, Georgia, May 24-25, 1999, Presenters identify issues and challenges faced by the valuation actuary when performing cash-flow testing on equity-indexed and variable products.

Description: This paper considers the question of whether or not the growth in the size of financial statements witnessed over the last several years has yielded an increase in the quality of disclosure around issues of financial risk and to what extent this disclosure is satisfying the perceived needs of readers of the financial statements, as represented by the investment analyst community. The question is addressed by presenting the results of research consisting of 1 the review and analysis of the disclosures addressing issues of financial risk contained within financial statements issued from 1999 to 2004 by 25 major insurance companies operating in the US and 2 the interviewing of 5 insurance industry analysts to understand their perceptions of what is good and bad about financial disclosure practices of life insurance companies.

Description: U.K. life insurers writing participating business are required by the Financial Services Authority to value their assets and liabilities on a market-consistent basis. The purpose of this paper is to: • Explain the valuation approach based on market-consistent values and its rationale. • Set out the issues faced by life insurers in implementing the regime. • Explain how insurers addressed these issues. • Explain the importance of the modeling techniques they used.

Description: This article provides an update, as of October 2023, on Financial Reporting Section research projects in process and those recently completed.

Description: This paper outlines how derivation of many balance sheet items can be improved both at the year end and at interim shipment dates by a company which utilizes data processing equipment. From Transactions of Society of Actuaries 1958, Vol. 10, No. 28.

Description: This is a compilation or risk management terms garnered from a survey of risk professionals supplemented with analysis of firm-level information on significant risks as reported in 10-K financial statements. Results indicate the existence of significance differences in terminology. The dominating pattern observed is a dichotomy between internal and external perceptions. Also observed is a difference between terms used by actuarial professionals and traditional risk managers.

Description: 1999 SOA Annual Meeting, San Francisco. This panel examined the determination and use of the cost of capital for both stock and mutual companies. Topics covered included: 1. How to measure the cost of capital. 2. Use of cost of capital in choosing among options or setting an enterprise's direction. 3. Should different costs of capital be used for different purposes? 4. Options for financing and the effect on cost. 5. Maximizing return by proper mix of options. 6. Example of an acquisition. 7. Appropriate amount of capital. 8. International perspective.

Description: 1994 SOA Spring Meeting, San Francisco. This session addressed some of the unanswered questions with respect to Appointed Actuary issues. Questions addressed: • Should stockholder dividends be included in the appointed actuary's reserve/asset adequacy analysis? • How are appointed actuaries handling Section 7 Opinions in states that have not yet adopted the model regulations? • How are appointed actuaries addressing the aggregate requirement in the state of filing? • What about retroactive/extraterritorial reserve requirements? • Are appointed actuaries addressing the going-concern issues for undercapitalized companies? Should they?