Description: Robert North critiques the article Reinventing Pension Actuarial Science by Lawrence Bader and Jeremy Gold. From The Pension Forum, January 2003, Volume 15, Issue No. 1.

Description: The Employee Retiree Income Security Act, or ERISA, establishes an important statutory role for pension actuaries in the United States. As part of its statutory goal to protect the retirement security of America’s workers, ERISA requires tax-qualified defined benefit plans to obtain an actuarial valuation of plan reserves each year. When valuing the plan’s reserves, the actuary is required by ERISA to act on behalf of plan participants. Thus, the plan actuary fulfills an important role in maintaining the plan’s ability to meet its on-going obligations to the plan participants and their beneficiaries. From Pension Section News, April 2006, Issue No. 61.

Description: Summary of the health section council’s research project to assess the accuracy of commonly used IBNR estimation methods over a wide range of scenarios.

Description: Article describing the purpose of the Academy’s Actuarial Opinion and Memorandum (AOM) Discussion Group.

Description: In this translation of an original article by Oscar E. Velandia, the role of the actuary in the Colombian insurance market place in light of regulatory change is examined. A comparison with the rules from the Solvency II Directive puts the actuarial function into context. In addition, the new financial reporting requirements set forth by IFRS 17 and the involvement of the actuary in finance is described.

Description: This article summarizes the results of the first part of a U.S. Appointed Actuaries survey asking about the usefulness of the various documents that have been created to guide valuation actuaries.

Description: Actuaries may soon be required to select assumptions that are individually reasonable when measuring pension obligations. This is the core meaning of a proposed amendment to the Actuarial Standard of Practice #4 in addition to the proposed ASOP on economic assumptions.

Description: Discussion of the 1998 Generally Recognized Expense Table GRET and questions pertaining to the acceptable use of the GRET to demonstrate compliance with the NAIC Life Insurance Illustrations Model Regulation.

Description: This article summarizes disciplinary actions taken during May and June 2011 by Society of Actuaries' Discipline Committees convened to review matters referred by the Actuarial Board for Counseling and Discipline ['ABCD'].

Description: Letter to editor responding to "“Blood, Guts, ASOPs and Delivery System Reform", interpreting ASOPs differently than the authors.