Description: Statutory and GAAP metrics are useful for regulators, investors, and other external parties who require a consistent basis for viewing snapshots of companies at a point in time, however, their uses are more limited for managers who are tasked with making strategic decisions. Many insurers are turning to internally developed metrics such as value of new business (VNB) for better profitability insights at the point of sale and to understand how new business profitability changes over time. By leveraging existing models and reporting processes, insurers can reduce the additional effort involved, applying VNB toward applications such as pricing, capital allocation, and risk management. Discuss key considerations for developing and using VNB. Begin with a brief overview of VNB, including how VNB addresses specific shortcomings of Stat and GAAP. Next, discuss applications of VNB for life and annuity business and conclude with some implementation case studies.

Description: Reinsurance transactions have become increasingly common in the annuity market as means to reduce risk, improve pricing, release capital, or exit a line of business. The market has become increasingly complex as it has grown. Insurance carriers and reinsurance providers now need to keep up with a growing range of reinsurance structures to manage their business efficiently. This session will detail the different types of annuity reinsurance transactions currently being executed in the market, the costs and benefits of different approaches, and recent trends in reinsurance structuring. At the conclusion of the session, you will understand the basics of how annuity reinsurance is being used in the market today as well as how to understand and evaluate potential reinsurance transactions.

Description: It is time to'go live with ASU 2018-12, otherwise known as long-duration targeted improvements (LDTI). For companies that have single premium limited payment contracts, additional work will be necessary under LDTI if the contracts are currently utilizing a break-even discount rate to defer the excess of the gross premium over the net premium, i.e. the deferred profit liability. This is mainly driven by requirements under LDTI to update for actual experience and review assumptions at least on an annual basis. This session is designed to cover LDTI implications specific to carriers of single premium limited payment contracts, including changes to how deferred profit liabilities are calculated going forward under LDTI and their impact to financial statements. By attending the session, you will: - Identify the LDTI implementation issues impacting their immediate annuity business. - Determine how balances will be established at transition. - Describe the explicit DPL calculations required going forward under LDTI, and their impact to financial statements.

Description: Join us for the Recent Trends in the Competitive Landscape webcast where you'll find an exploration of the how the insurance industry is rapidly evolving. Discover various structures and reinsurance strategies that will improve a competitive position in the insurance landscape. Come learn about the latest structures used by insurers in the market, which will focus on asset strategies that create a growing segment of the Life and Annuity insurer landscape. Indicate the key components of asset strategies that result in significant changes to the insurance investment landscape.

Description: In this Determining Appropriate Sensitivity Tests webcast, explore sensitivity testing effectiveness, the important difference between sensitivity and stress testing and more. Understanding sensitivity testing is critical to actuarial work, especially in order to properly assess and evaluate risk factors. Come explore approached to sensitivity tests and effective evaluations of sensitivity test results in order to elevate your knowledge within the actuarial science field.

Description: 2020 and 2021 presented numerous challenges to life and annuity product development actuaries. External forces required carriers to rethink underwriting requirements and risk assessment in real time. Alterations in regulatory frameworks and statutory requirements forced changes to product development priorities while alterationsin the work environment forced changes in how work routines were structured. This session will bring together a group of life and annuity stakeholders to discuss how they addressed these and other challenges, and how their work will be impacted going forward.

Description: Life and annuity markets around the world have seen increasingly complex investment-combined products, including universal life, fixed indexed annuities, variable annuities with a wide variety of guaranteed benefits and indexed variable annuities. Insurance companies are facing unprecedented exposure to financial risks in addition to traditional mortality and longevity risks. The risk assessment and modeling for such complex designs by conventional methods often focus heavily on their market competitiveness and profitability. However, there seems to be a lack of quantifiable and systematic approaches to assess investment risks associated with investment combined products. The objective of the proposed work is to develop a framework for quantifying and analyzing various forms of contractual designs and showcase different techniques to assess the trade-off between competitive contractual designs and their practical implications regarding the difficulty of risk management.

Description: Recently the interest rates have been slowly trending up from the lowest point in August 2020. The focus of this article is on current market trends for long-duration products —including life insurance, annuities, and long-term care insurance —following an extended period of low interest rates, and lessons carriers can learn from similar historical periods of rising interest rates. Innovative and flexible product features will continue to be essential, as the current interest trend may not substantially increase insurers’ portfolio rates. When designing or modifying product features, insurers should consider profitability in a wide breadth of interest rate scenarios and be particularly mindful of the impact that crediting rates and asset durations will have on earnings.

Description: This article provides an overview and highlights of the recent paper Pension Risk Transfer: Evaluating Impact and Barriers for De-Risking Strategies. The market has evolved dramatically over the past 10 years, and the paper discusses the drivers behind these changes from both the plan sponsor and insurer viewpoints. The research also gathered input from various key stakeholders as to what changes the market could experience in the future.

Description: This article discusses the guidance provided in IRS Notice 2022-6 and prior guidance on whether distributions from an individual account under a qualified retirement plan satisfy the exception to the 10 percent additional tax in Internal Revenue Code section 72(t) for certain substantially equal periodic payments.