Description: The focus of this article is to provide background to actuaries on the updates in the employer stop loss medical insurance market including underwriting and pricing trends.

Description: This paper represents a brief progress report on research, being sponsored by the Casualty Actuarial Society and the Society of Actuaries, in the area of modeling of economic series. In particular, research is being undertaken to provide a foundation for the actuarial community’s modeling of a variety of economic variables, including interest rates, equity returns, inflation, unemployment rates, and real estate price levels. The specific objectives of this research are to provide a summary of the literature in the area of economic scenario modeling, identify data sources and methodologies in this area useful to the actuarial profession, and produce working software for economic modeling, including appropriate documentation, to be made available to the general actuarial community in order to allow actuaries to use and build upon this research. From Actuarial Research Clearing House 2004, Vol. 1.

Description: Commentary on practical observations resulting from constructing and running Economic Capital models. Possible standardization of assumptions and result interpretation are morphing even though use of E.C. models has now been around for years.

Description: Panelists at this session of the SOA 1998 Maui II Spring Meeting present methods for scenario generation and establishing stochasitc models for pension plans.

Description: This paper estimates the acquisition and maintenance costs associated with life policies as a function of the amount of insurance and number of policies of an insurer by estimating a cost function for our sample of insurers.

Description: Shareholders provide capital and receive the insurance profit. This paper demonstrates than an optimal capital level exists that generates the highest return for the shareholders of an insurance company. This result is derived using a risk capital model by Perold. The no-arbitrage argument, developed by Modigliani and Miller, is used throughout the paper and puts the discussion on a solid economic footing. From 2006 Enterprise Risk Management Symposium, M-AS06-1.

Description: This is an essay on the measurement of the reasonableness of each individual non-economic actuarial assumption. From the Pension Section News, September 2008, Issue No. 68.

Description: This is a review of literature about the development and application of medical risk adjustment models. The current Medicare model, principal inpatient diagnosis cost group [PIPDCG] and proposed enhancements are the subject of many articles. Risk adjustment is used for both provider payment and performance measurement.

Description: This paper investigates techniques for the assessment of model error in the context of insurance risk analysis.

Description: Pricing is a central activity of actuaries to assure solvency and to manage risk. Life insurance is also a social good, not just a product, and the US population is massively underinsured. Pricing must strike a balance. Unlike a simple 4x4 matrix to produce pricing, today's technology offers the ability to evaluate literally thousands of variables, enabling a kind of precision pricing. It also heightens the possibility of introducing bias and discrimination through the use of unregulated third-party data.