Description: Actuarial Assumptions for Pension Plans Invite Arbitrage The Case of Pension Obligation Bonds by Jeremy Gold from Risks and Rewards Newsletter, September 2000, Issue No. 35.

Description: 1994 SOA Spring Meeting, Orlando. This panel discussed the problems resulting from measuring insurance companies' investment performance, and they described a survey that was created to address some of these problems.

Description: This session from the 1984 SOA New York City Meeting discusses various investment risks, monitoring investment performance compared to objectives, measuring investment performance of GIC's, cash flow forecasting and investment programs and objectives. From Record of the Society of Actuaries Vol. 10, No. 3

Description: The purpose of this paper is to examine a special case of option pricing theory in which the insurance company promises the customer to exercise the option for him. This paper presents a simple formula for valuing the option. From the Actuarial Research Clearing House 1991, Vol.1.

Description: The purpose of this paper is to present to the actuarial profession a stochastic investment model which can be used for simulations extending for many years ahead. Discussed in the paper are the general reasons for choosing the style of model, the general model and how to use it, the assumptions and the sensitivity of model to the assumptions made and the possible applications in the investment and actuarial fields.

Description: 1994 SOA Spring Meeting, San Francisco. In this interactive presentation, the panel fielded investment questions from the audience. Prepared and audience questions included: 1. What is the FLUX measure? What's it supposed to do for regulators and insurance companies? 2. What sort of things really went on that caused the difficulties at Executive Life, First Capital, and Mutual Benefit? 3. What are some examples of hedges that you would recommend for a $100 million SPDA portfolio to try and combat the effects of rising interest rates? 4. Given the changes that experienced in interest rates, what's that been doing to the durations of typical interest-sensitive liabilities? 5. What do you do to hedge with derivatives or whatever if interest rates are going down? 6. What level of asset-liability matching do companies usually target? How do regulators view this?

Description: Interest rates steadily declining ever since the Volcker Fed tackled inflation in the early eighties. Ten years of stimulating monetary policy brought new lows. We should have braced ourselves for a return to neutrality, but that concept remains elusive. We will explore structural issues that have brought rates to these low levels and the potential impacts on the insurance business.

Description: 1993 SOA Annual Meeting, New York. This session discussion is about asset prepayment assumptions for regulatory cash-flow testing. Topics included: 1. The prepayment characteristics of corporate bonds with embedded options. 2. How much prepayment and redemption activity has taken place within that market. 3. Techniques that corporate bond issuers have used to retire debt prior to maturity. 4. The investment implications. 5. The impact that prepayments have on MBS price and return performance. 6. The challenges of prepayment modeling.

Description: This session from the 1984 SOA New York City Meeting discusses financial futures and options, an example of using options to hedge a risk, investment optimization and taxation. From Record of the Society of Actuaries Vol. 10, No. 3

Description: This report describes a stochastic simulation approach used to estimate the amount of a level-payment annuity payable as long as the person is alive and living in his/her house. A discussion of the paper follows. From Transactions of Society of Actuaries 1991, Vol. 43.