Description: Editors discuss the articles in this issue.

Description: Infrastructure investments are growing as an asset class in institutional portfolios because they present significant diversification benefits to investors, and importantly for pension plans, typically represent long-term projects. Infrastructure presents a unique opportunity for investors interested in long-duration products that help match liabilities. This session outlines the structure of infrastructure deals, how investments can be made through either equity or debt financing, the importance of ESG, and how to incorporate infrastructure in an institutional portfolio.

Description: ERM and Investment strategies for healthcare companies

Description: Proposes a benchmark consisting of TIPs and deferred income annuities for retirement asset allocation decisions.

Description: Abstract: A model for analyzing the probability and severity of default of sovereign entities and banks. The methodology analyzes the risks inherent in the investment of debt of sovereign governments and large financial institutions side-by-side, taking into consideration macroeconomic interactions among the sovereign fiscal and monetary authorities, the financial institutions, and the real economy. The signature aspect of the methodology is that it adapts a Merton-style default model to use explicit measures of sovereign assets and asset volatility.

Description: 1998 SOA Spring Meeting, Maui. The panelists discussed the many factors involved with insurance company decisions on whether they are putting their money to work in a most prudent fashion. This session focused on the practical aspects of asset allocation.

Description: This session will serve as a guide on how to implement a factor-based optimization in the Strategic Asset Allocation process. The session will review a factor-based investing approach and cover the top-down macroeconomic drivers of risk and return for various asset classes. We will then illustrate implementation of this investing approach and determination of an optimal Strategic Asset Allocation through a pension fund case study. There will be an interactive element to the session as the factor sensitivities of various portfolios can be examined in real-time.

Description: Risk management and capital budgeting are two critical components of the corporate decision process. They often need to be considered jointly at the corporate level because of their natural interaction through the dependent risk exposures and other synergetic relationships within an intricate corporate structure in a dynamic business environment. . This paper develops an integrated framework that aligns these two important corporate strategies across business divisions to optimize the streamlined enterprise strategic goal in a multi-period setting. The proposed integrated framework can serve as a practical guideline for corporate executives to optimally coordinate capital budgeting and risk management at the enterprise level.

Description: This session discussion is about asset/liability matching, risk tolerance versus yield determination and role of insurance company products and investment services. From Record of the Society of Actuaries Vol. 14, No. 1.

Description: Our panel of experts discusses different investment strategies for pension plans, expected asset returns, appropriateness of these strategies for use with different types of plans and effects on a plan's annual contribution requirement and pension expense. From the Record of the Society of Actuaries, Volume 29, No. 3, Session 11pd.