Description: Discussion of the March 1, 2013 Internal Revenue Service (“IRS”) release of PLR 201309011, which addresses the application of the section 817(h) diversification requirements to variable contracts that have invested in illiquid investment vehicles (the “Funds”).

Description: This is an article that discusses the retreat of savings banks from mutuality. As we ponder the future of mutual life insurance, we should be aware of the change sweeping through the mutual savings bank industry.

Description: This discussion at the 1968 Annual Meeting covers insurance company investment issues including measurement of investment performance and models for measuring perfomance.

Description: Many experts tout the benefits of index investing, but history tells us that when enough investors do the same thing it tends to end badly. Stay tuned!

Description: The paper discussed the reasons for a stock company's mutualization detail the mutualization process itself consider actuarial, legal, and other problems that arise and review a recent case history.

Description: The academy generator is widely applied in actuarial practice. Initially confined to regulatory reserving, companies are increasingly using the AAA/SOA generator over an ever widening range of applications testing the limits of the academy generator's intended function. The session will give a brief overview of the academy generator and the asset classes it can be used to model. It will also analyze the statistical properties of the academy scenarios and discuss the scenarios relative to standard validation criterion. Some of the challenges that actuaries face in using this framework will be reviewed and options for addressing these challenges will be offered.

Description: Investment risk management has become a core competency of insurance companies, and much has been discussed on this topic. This session examines the current investment risk management practices such as product line specific hedging and macro hedging, with a focus on what still remains to be addressed—whether the tradeoff of addition risk management is worthwhile.

Description: This article provides an analysis of Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities TIPS, examining the mechanics of these bonds, how they have performed to date and what may be expected for the future.

Description: There are many factors involved with managing the financial condition of an insurance company and the factors usually fall into on of three categories: earnings management, capital management and risk management. Transfer pricing involves assigning a price for the use of funds that are transferred within the company.

Description: Gold has been one of the worst performing investment assets of the last two decades due to the steady to low inflation. In the future, if the US economic environment takes a turn for the worst or inflation reemerges, gold will once again be a high performing investment.