Description: Businesses across the board have been drastically impacted by the effects of COVID-19 over the course of 2020, and insurance was not immune. Perhaps most relevant to this industry’s current capital and liquidity concern is the prevailing low interest rate environment. This has been a global trend in the last decade, and treasury rates in much of the developed world are at or near zero. Reduced investment returns limit an insurer’s ability to achieve their desired return on equity, eliminating previously profitable strategies that depended on the leverage of life and annuity balance sheets. Focus and activity have instead shifted to other methods to counteract the low interest rate markets and accompanying capital strain. Examples include increased mergers and acquisitions (M&A) activity within the insurance industry and an increasing focus by private equity firms in the insurance market for asset-intensive products, both of which reflect the goal of increasing yield rates on capital.

Description: See the requirements for the FSA designation.

Description: This article is about the 2008 Living to 100 Symposium which highlighted changes in longevity, biological perspectives, mortality trends and more .

Description: This report, part of the Society of Actuaries [SOA] ‘Experience Studies – Business Practice Surveys,’ presents the results of the survey on laboratory testing issues, prepared by the SOA Committee on Life Insurance Mortality and Underwriting Surveys Laboratory Tests Survey Subcommittee. The survey asks questions about companies’ internal practices in regards to how laboratory tests become part of the underwriting paradigm, in particular, how changes are made, who the decision-makers are, and what support is necessary to add a test.

Description: This is a listing of presentations held at the Chicago Annual Meeting on October 15-18, 2000.

Description: This is a listing of presentations from the San Diego Spring Meeting held June 22–23, 2000.

Description: The adoption of FAS 158 forces sponsors of post-employment health benefit plans to consider how to manage the volatility that changes in medical care inflation create in the other postemployment benefits (OPEB) liability. By choosing carefully how the nominal discount rate used for the liability is decomposed into real rates and inflation, I illustrate that the true exposure to an OPEB plan is to the spread of medical care inflation above (or below) the overall inflation rate. The implication is that an effective immunization strategy exists that can eliminate most of the volatility in the OPEB account.

Description: The purpose of this report is to start an informed debate on the issues surrounding the treatment of diversification in the solvency assessment of insurers. The members of the Chief Risk Officer Forum herein suggest a framework for how diversification should be treated within a prudential regulatory framework.