Description: 1998 SOA Spring Meeting, Maui. Panel discusses the some of the newer outlets that portfolio managers have been using for their investable cash. Topics discussed: 1. New risk classes. 2. Update on insurance and catastrophe risk bonds. 3. Capital-efficient structured notes. 4. Leveraged debt and equity plays. 5. Other risk/reward enhancement techniques.

Description: This presentation suggests a possible flexible solution to the time and resource problems of running a large number of stochastic interest rate scenarios, by selecting a representative subset. Each interest rate scenario consists of 30 future spot yield curves, where a reasonable number of points are specified on each curve such as 12. The distribution of the scenarios is approximated by the subset and each scenario in the subset has equal weight. The method is independent of the inter rate generator used.

Description: Insurance companies utilize derivatives in a variety of ways to manage and mitigate risks that are inherent in their investment or liability portfolios. They can be characterized by three main features: medium long-term duration; large volumes; and significant market risk exposure. Given the persistent low interest rate environment across the curve since the 2008 financial crisis, large companies need to hedge their liabilities, as illustrated by the significant recent increase from $786 billion as of fiscal year 2010 to $1,885 billion as of FY 2014 by insurance companies.As the Variable Annuities (VA) guarantees embedded within those liabilities hold a strong convex risk profile with respect to the underlying stock, VA carriers need to buy some convex hedge assets such as options to match the liability risk profile to improve hedge effectiveness, implying the growing cost of hedging. Such market impact of the quantity on the cost of hedging is further magnified in the recent period with the short-lived, but sharp transitions from low volatility to high volatility, when market volatility suddenly increases, even when there were no well-known fundamental catalysts. This partially stems from the growing managed volatility funds embedded within VA ($bn 400).VA carriers willing to trade a large quantity of options will see such market impact as an important dilemma, as the cost of placing one large order to close position will be far greater than the sum of infinitely small orders differed in time. In that context, managing market impact requires introducing an explicit market impact function, the influence of which the agent will try to minimize. The effect on hedge asset prices significantly depends on whether there is or not significant delta hedging activity. In case of no significant delta hedging activity, the risk appetite has a significant influence on the optimal execution strategy. If there is significant delta hedging activity, the optimal trading involve

Description: Discusses how surplus should be defined, how it should be invested, and how the rating agencies may respond to various approaches. From the 1987 Record of Society of Actuaries, Vol. 13, No. 3.

Description: This presentation is a panel discussion from the 1991 Annual Meeting of the Society of Actuaries, held October 20-23 in Toronto. Citing the current environment of recent insurance company insolvencies, bad investments, and capital erosion, the panelists discuss issues of interest to the investment actuary, including Financial accounting Standards Board [FASB] activity in market-value [MV] accounting, ways to evaluate asset quality and default risk in an MV environment, the impact of MV accounting on investment strategy, the new benchmark of ‘Return on MV Surplus,’ MV behavior of assets and liabilities, use of derivative instruments to hedge MV surplus volatility, and investment aspects of risk-based capital. Discussion from participants is included. From the Record of Society of Actuaries, Volume 17, No. 4B.

Description: Presented at August 2011 Actuarial Research Conference. Summarizes the Heston model, discusses hedging equity indexed annuities, and provides numerical results of the Black-Scholes and Heston hedging strategies.

Description: 1992 SOA Annual Meeting, Washington, D.C. This session on cash-flow testing for product actuaries covered the following topics: 1. Guidance notes designed to help in writing up reports on cash-flow testing. 2. Investment strategies in product design. 3. Surplus requirements.