Description: The Impact of Tax Reform on Federal LTCI Deductibility for Business Owners.

Description: Author discusses the treatment of current life insurance reserves under the tax code in determining a life insurer's taxable income, and what challenges are ahead in the era of principles-based reserves.

Description: Discusses and critiques a report entitled Adjusting Life Insurance Company Earnings by John La Maochia, Jr. The report describes and critiques the various methods stock analysts use to adjust statutory earnings to evaluate company earnings.

Description: Research is a primary mission of the Financial Reporting Section and is the largest use of section dues. This scorecard will keep section members informed about research projects sponsored or co-sponsored by the section.

Description: Summarizes the discussions over the past quarter between the IASB and the FASB regarding finalizing IFRS

Description: Key considerations when modeling reinsurance to calculate reserves under PBR as well as a case study examining the impact of reinsurance structures on reserves.

Description: This 2008 article discusses the current status of the statutory principle-based approach PBA to reserves and capital, including risk based capital RBC, federal income tax implications, and other topics, noting that the project is “still a work in process.”

Description: Under non-Aristotelian logic, there are multiple values, or shades of gray. Indeed, there may even be unexpected results from logical combinations, like “both” and “neither.” This article discusses how this insight should be applied to the current debate between formula-driven reserves with limited assumption flexibility and the reserve principles approach. For reserve standards, we do need both actuarial judgment grounded in reserving principles and restrictive formula methods or safe harbors.

Description: Actuaries are accustomed to considering how much conservatism is appropriate in their estimates, whether made for pricing or for mea- surement of liabilities. In the proposals for a new standard on accounting for insurance contracts, this conservatism is referred to by the International Accounting Standards Board IASB and the Financial Accounting Standard Board FASB of the United States as the risk adjustment.

Description: The author refers to a separate article in this edition of Risks and Rewards, in which Babbel, Gold and Merrill provide an excellent exposition of three approaches to present-valuing a series of risky cash flows and provide several insights into the way modern finance theory deals with risk. The purpose of this article is to bring these insights to the world of insurance risks and view them in relation to existing actuarial techniques. The author also discusses direct discounting and the actuarial appraisal method and their consistency.