Description: As our industry rapidly adopts more advanced technologies, today's actuaries have more data and greater analytical capabilities than ever before. Nevertheless, these advancements come with their own set of challenges.Come explore the tools and techniques to optimize your processes and avoid common pitfalls so that you can get the most out of your experience studies.

Description: Hot Topics in Setting Pension Return Assumptions is the third in a series, following Mathematics of Pension Return Assumption and Inflation, focusing on Effects, Forecasts, and Role in Pension Valuations. What time horizon is more appropriate for Capital Market Assumption (CMA) forecasts: mid-term or long-term time horizon, or a blend of both? How do we map the asset classes of a plan's own investment policy to the asset classes of investment forecasters' CMAs? If we use asset-smoothing for valuation assets, should we use market-driven expected returns or smoothed/average versions of them?

Description: Asset liability management is an important task for any insurer, where tools like Excel play an important role from an analytics perspective. Dashboard tools like Power Bi and Tableau can supercharge an organization’s ability to perform ALM with real-time precision and monitoring of risk/imbalances. The dashboard can provide insights into potential risks posed by asset allocation and concentration, allowing for informed decision-making to mitigate those risks. The presenters will walk the audience through an example of ALM use case, including how to build key performance indicators such as cash flow, asset allocation, and risk exposure. Additionally, we will demonstrate how these types of dashboards can be customized to fit the specific needs of your organization.

Description: Join us for the Pandemics & Paradigm Shifts: ERM in an Intensely Dynamic World panel discussion, where industry and regulatory perspectives will help provide insight into a number of topics. Expect interactive dialogue opportunities based on the conversation between the panelists and the audience. Key topics that will be conversed about, but the panel is not limited to, include a brief review of historical paradigm shifts and subsequent insurer failures, best practices and an outlook on the ultra-dynamic world of today and consideration of a company's enterprise risk management framework as it affects ratings and insurance department examinations.

Description: Internal audit (IA) projects typically focus on evaluating the risks and operational effectiveness of a company’s technological, regulatory/compliance, and/or financial processes and procedures. Because LDTI and IFRS 17 compliance will require extensive rewiring of existing and possibly the implementation of new processes and procedures to comply with the new accounting requirements, IA will be critical in conducting the initial risk assessment of these changes, monitoring of the process changeover, and conducting a post-implementation validation after conversion. Explore many specific areas that will be impacted, highlight those aspects likely to be under the IA magnifying glass, and find out how you can best prepare your IA teams to understand the changes and expedite the testing timeframes of their audits. By attending the session, you will be able to: • Understand general IA testing approach and framework. • Identify and address the key processes and procedures likely to be impacted by accounting change. • Build a communication plan that tailors the level of detail of documentation to the intended audience. (e.g., Leadership and BOD) • Document decisions made and implemented with IA in mind.

Description: The time has arrived for ASU 2018-12, otherwise known as Long-Duration Targeted Improvements (LDTI). For health insurance products, the ASU will require considerable efforts to make the necessary changes to valuation systems, procedures, assumptions, and/or methodologies in order to be in compliance. This session is designed to cover LDTI implications specific to carriers of long-term care and supplemental health products, including changes to how attained age rated products will be approached, allocating and discounting the claim liability (IBNR), and how the treatment of Profits Followed by Losses (PFBL) will evolve under LDTI. By attending this session, you will be able to: • Understand LDTI’s key impacts on long-duration health insurance products. • Recognize the treatment of attained age rated products under LDTI. • Comprehend the requirements of allocating the claim liability to cohorts. • Grasp the requirements pertaining to the discounting of the claim liability. • Understand how PFBL will evolve under the new standard.

Description: Modeling Approaches and Challenges focuses on approaches to real world simulation and the challenges and considerations in real world simulation. Topics include: A frequency domain approach to build realistic multi-horizon scenarios. (Ortec approach) Cascade models structure linking models for major asset classes and economic variables. (Moody’s approach) Overview of models, calibrations & approaches within the context of different use cases. Deterministic & stochastic approaches. Importance of model re-calibration flexibility. We will also discuss specific insights into considerations and challenges in real world simulation, which include topics like: Setting capital market assumptions and/or calibration targets. Assumptions about correlation and causality. Calibrating the model to capital markets assumptions. Validating the model against capital market assumptions. Role of history, market data and stylized facts. Importance of back testing. Calibrating the model to multiple investment horizons. Inclusion of alterative asset classes such as private equity, infrastructure, and direct real estate. Associated issues of limited data, illiquidity and greater uncertainty about calibration targets.