Description: Executive Coach Marcel Schwantes demonstrated that applying daily practices of Servant Leadership is really the best way to engage workers to perform at a high level, which will improve the bottom line. Here Schwantes returns to kick-off a six part series that delves deep into the best practices of what a servant leader is, and does.

Description: The editors provide highlights of the articles included in the August 2015 issue of Risk Management.

Description: Decomposes guaranteed minimum maturity benefit option into a basket of components, and values each component with both a Black-Scholes model and a regime-switching GARCH model. Performs sensitivity analysis on dynamic lapse assumption.

Description: Risk Management, the newsletter of the Joint Risk Management Section. August 2015, entire issue

Description: The Stepping Stone August 2015 issue.

Description: Institutional investors seeking to hedge have no shortage of choices, and need the right framework to manage the different risks in portfolios as they arise. This article analyzes performance of different equity hedging strategies over the last 15 years, and lays out a potential hedging framework that takes into account types of risks being hedged, fundamental views, and current market pricing of protection.

Description: The Modeling Platform

Description: A survey report designed to provide an overview of the current state of the industry’s preparedness for implementing PBR.

Description: Financial Reporting Section, Issue 101, June 2015, The Financial Reporter

Description: Introducing tools to help actuaries explain non-traditional DAC and SOP reserve movements no non-actuarial audiences.

Description: This article addresses the role of pension risk management in the context of corporate risk management and how pension risk management strategies might optimally be implemented to increase the probability that pension benefits can be financed from plan assess and that, when and if required, unexpected increases in corporate contributions can be made without financial discomfort to the firm.

Description: A review of the development of multi-asset indices and their placement in fixed indexed annuities in the Unites States. This article covers the evolution of indexing and its impact on the annuity marketplace. It also summarizes the key factors underlying the proliferation of multi-asset indices with built-in volatility targets.

Description: Product Development Section, Product Matters, Issue 92, June 2015

Description: A series of brief notes on how actuaries can learn from some of the backstories of the movie "The Interview".

Description: A primer on extreme event modeling and mitigation for practitioners, it covers the complete cycle of extreme event risk management, from identifying experience data sources, to extreme event detection, to modeling and dependence analysis, and finally to monitoring and mitigation.

Description: This article summarizes the presentations by the Society of Actuaries and the Academy of Actuaries at the January 2015 National Academy of Social Insurance (NASI) Roundtables in Washington DC. SOA presented on the 2014 SOA monograph series "The Link between Retirement Security and Long-Term Care."

Description: The author explores the implications of the International Financial Reporting Standard (IFRS), both for companies that will need to report under this standard and for companies that will not need to report but will still be affected by its implementation.

Description: Long-Term Care News

Description: Improving understanding of the complex relationships among financial entities is critically important for risk managers and for financial authorities charged with multiple policy objectives. High quality information is lacking at both the intra- and inter-enterprise levels and to support analysis of the financial network. Put simply, the current quality and quantity of relationship data is not sufficient to deliver on the ultimate objectives. For the purpose of this discussion we use a very generic definition of a term relationship somewhat similar to the definition used to describe human relationships. And like in the human relationships case we will not claim that only marriage and blood connection makes your relatives, but also loaning a book, loving, hating and sharing a flat. In the financial context, the relationships may be determined by accounting rules set, for example, by IFRS or US GAAP, as well as regulatory requirements in areas o f risk management, market integrity, know-your-client, network analysis and statistical consolidation. The financial industry and regulators have spent countless hours arguing and debating the definition of ownership. The problem lies in the question itself. We suggest that as part of any relationship data system the best approach is to put the question aside and avoid a conceptual and practical quagmire. Rather, we recommend collecting and storing less-subjective granular data on theactual legal and economic relationships between firms, which provides a flexibleframework from which any user can answer the question on corporate relationships he or she determines is appropriate at a given time. Encouragingly, technological solutions are available to accommodate this multiplicity of requirements in a single solution. The paper outlines where the practical challenges are that inhibit the development of high quality relationship data and how they can be overcome.

Description: This paper develops a conceptually rigorous, but practical, approach to estimating risk margins that are consistent with actuary's cost of capital concept.

Description: Description * This paper proposes a new type of financial derivative named contingent liquidity swap (CLS) to address the liquidity issue. CLS is a swap agreement that the buyer of the swap pays cash in exchange for less-liquid assets in the event of a liquidity event. Those less-liquid assets may include stocks or high-yield bonds. The seller of the CLS makes a series of payments for the contingent liquidity. The payment should be lower than the equity risk premium to reduce the cost of funding but high enough to attract investors.

Description: This paper develops a conceptually rigorous, but practical, approach to estimating risk margins that are consistent with actuary's cost of capital concept.

Description: Financial reporter March 2015 Issue 100

Description: A description of the requirement to disclose a reconciliation of the opening and ending balance of liabilities for insurance contracts in the proposed new IFRS for insurance, and reasons why it should be seen as more than a compliance effort.

Description: Asset modeling is becoming increasingly complex, detailed and important to insurance company financial reporting and risk management. This article describes the author's personal perspective on the current state of asset modeling in insurance companies and the future challenges facing actuaries who develop, maintain and use ALM models.

Description: Entire issue of Small Talk, March 2015 - Issue 43

Description: Risk Management March 2015, Issue 32

Description: Gestion du risque March 2015, Issue 32

Description: Life and annuity (L&A) insurance providers are under intense pressure to maintain profitability in the face of increasing competition, low interest rates, increased regulation from the Own Risk and Solvency Assessment (ORSA) and the risk of rising inflation. The liability duration of mostL&A insurers tends to be over 10 years, with some insurers having liability durations longer than 30 years (long-term care, or LTC). As companies seek to increase interest-rate spreads from the discount rate that is used in pricing, investment income is playing an even more vital role in the profitability of L&A companies than in past years. In today’s low interest-rate environment, however, companies have often had to increase their exposure to greater financial risk in order to generate the necessary investment income.

Description: Regulatory Developments Applicable to Small Company Actuaries

Description: To comply with VM reporting requirements, what is the simplest path for a small company that has passed the Deterministic Exclusion Test and the Stochastic Exclusion Test?

Description: Report summarizing the results of the 2014 PBITT UL with Secondary Guarantees Survey

Description: View the ERM case study.

Description: Performance metrics are widely used by companies to create benchmarks, assess performance, and make strategic decisions. Traditional metrics, however, may not properly capture the risks embedded in complex or illiquid insurance liabilities, as recent global market volatility has revealed. As a result, executives are increasingly turning to risk-adjusted performance metrics (RAPMs) to enhance performance measurement. This article describes the shortcomings of traditional performance metrics and introduces some of the more commonly used RAPMs.

Description: The entire issue of The Stepping Stone, February 2015 - Issue 57

Description: Adapted from a chapter of "Awake at Work" by Michael Carroll, this edition of the series discusses how fundamental Buddhist principles of change and impermanance pervade the world of the actuary and how the actuary can work with these principles to add value to his employer or client.

Description: As an independent actuarial recruiter for the past 15 years, I've observed how some actuarial careers reflect steep trajectories, whereas others plateau or stagnate. The single biggest factor I’ve observed to determine this trajectory is an actuary’s ability to communicate in a way where he or she is perceived not merely as a technical resource, but as a strategic business partner whose insight, knowledge and opinion carry influence with decision-makers. We'll walk through Three Keys to help you create this transformation so that decision-makers no longer perceive you as a technical resource, but will see you as a strategic business partner.

Description: This report explores the impact on financial assets as baby boomers enter into retirement. The authors conducted a literature search and then a detailed analysis of two papers supporting the theory demographic factors can have an impact on asset prices.

Description: View the fall 2014 case study for Exam ILA LRM.

Description: Professional development opportunities from the Society of Actuaries.

Description: recap of the East Asian Actuarial Conference

Description: Using the recent West Africa Ebola outbreak as an example, the authors discuss several modeling approaches that can be useful for estimating pandemic risk.

Description: This report presents findings from the 2013 Risks and Process of Retirement Survey, specifically those relating to the phases of retirement. “Phases of retirement” refers to changes that take place during retirement. The report uses quotations from the series of focus groups to illustrate the findings and addresses factors relating to how people decide to retire and to changes in lifestyle and needs over the course of retirement, including paid employment and housing.

Description: Recently completed experience and research studies from the SOA.

Description: Profile of the Health Section.

Description: The collection of papers in this monograph were the result of a call for papers issued by the SOA’s Committee on Post Retirement Needs and Risks in partnership with the Long Term Care Section to explore the impact of long‐term care needs and expense on retirement security from a variety of aspects. The papers help expand thinking on how long‐term care events impact families as well as approaches to mitigating the impact of these events and related issues. As a result, this monograph provides a multi–disciplinary, textured analysis on this topic and serves to encourage future work in this area. - See more at: http://new.soa.org/news-and-publications/publications/other-publications/monographs/pub-retirement-systems-monographs.aspx?&cmsMode=Preview&langtype=1033#sthash.KVM2cSq7.dpuf

Description: Both claim inflation rate and yield drive the loss ratio projection of long term care insurance (LTCi). The effects depends on whether a policy has inflation protection or not. A constant margin between claim inflation and discount rates does not produce a constant loss ratio. Considering the relationship between yield and claim inflation would improve the risk profile of LTCi.

Description: Complete issue of Long-term Care December 2014