Description: This paper explores Indian futures and options market as a market for hedging by equity holders. The authors have tried to examine optimal hedge ratio and hedge efficiency, and to provide empirical evidence from India.

Description: This presentation is an open forum from the 1991 Annual Meeting of the Society of Actuaries, held October 20-23 in Toronto. The speakers, members of the Pension Committee of the Actuarial Standards Board [ASB], present an update on the ASB’s exposure drafts of actuarial standards of practice intended to provide detailed guidance on setting economic assumptions for pension plans. The session is concerned with selecting actuarial assumptions, specifically economic assumptions, for measuring pension obligations. The speakers note that in addition to providing guidance to actuaries, the standards are designed to help users of our work product understand what actuaries consider in determining their assumptions. Discussion from participants is included. From the Record of Society of Actuaries, Volume 17, No. 4B.

Description: The values of life insurance and annuity liabilities move in opposite directions in response to a change in the underlying mortality. Natural hedging utilizes this to stabilize aggregate liability cash flows. Our study shows empirical evidence that insurers who utilize natural hedging also charge lower premiums than otherwise similar insurers. This indicates that insurers who are able to utilize natural hedging have a competitive advantage. In addition, we show how a mortality swap might be used to provide the benefits of natural hedging to a firm that writes only one of the lines of business.

Description: This paper discusses some of the models used to quantify risk, note some areas where improvements in standard methods are needed, and in some cases suggest alternative approaches for risks in Property and Casualty Insurance and Life Insurance.

Description: From a session at a meeting of the Society of Actuaries held in San Diego, CA, June 22-23, 2000 This session provides a brief overview and status of a variety of recent National Association of Insurance Commissioners statutory financial reporting developments.

Description: Actuary/accountant/tax attorney dialogue on recent guidance issued regarding treatment of deficiency reserves with respect to the “statutory reserves cap” of Internal Revenue Code section 807(d)(1).

Description: This paper demonstrates that using a conditional probability approach to analyzing investment data yields investment forecast and stock option pricing models which more closely match actual market data, and it demonstrates the impact that conditional probabilities could have on CAPM beta and risk premia calculations. Reprinted from: Journal of Financial and Economic Practice, Vol. 6 No. 2 Spring 2006.

Description: This paper attempts to distill from these various models a practical application of the key principles for reform.

Description: Session from a 1992 meeting of the Society of Actuaries . Representatives of the IRS addressed current IRS regulation issues with respect to qualified pension plans, followed by a question and answer session with the audience.

Description: This presentation is a concurrent session from the Annual Meeting of the Society of Actuaries, held, October 24-26, 1977 in Boston. The panelists discuss criticisms that have been made of life insurance companies' handling of dividend apportionment and dividend illustrations for individual life insurance and annuities. They discuss whether actuarial organizations should respond to these criticisms, and whether this can be done by formulating appropriate Guides to Professional Conduct and Opinions as to Professional Conduct. Specific dividend issues are discussed. Discussion from Participants is included. From the Record of Society of Actuaries, Volume 3, No. 4.