Description: Examination of full surrender and benefit utilization industry experience for Variable Annuities with and without Guaranteed Lifetime Withdrawal Benefits. Part 1 of 3 articles focuses on full surrenders and building a dynamic surrender function using predictive modeling tools.

Description: This article briefly describes the guarantees available within the segregated Fund products sold in Canada along with the associated risks and cost factors.

Description: Variable insurance products are popular in the marketplace. They are risky to insurers partly because the guaranteed minimum living and death benefits give policyholders great control of their policies. In this article, the author investigates managing policyholder behavior.

Description: This article focuses on how a risk appetite framework can help a company manage the “three-headed monster” and why a risk appetite framework is critical to effective business and risk management at both the corporate and product levels.

Description: This article outlines the IRS directive published in July 2014, which provides a safe harbor treatment for variable annuity hedging gains and losses relating to VA contracts issued before Dec. 31, 2009.

Description: Tidbits include discussions about: Policy loans in excess of cost basis, treatment of loss adjustment expenses, LAE, for life insurance companies, and separate account investments in group trusts.

Description: The article discusses a recent IRS private letter ruling granting IRC section 72(b) exclusion ratio treatment for amounts received from an innovative payout option.under a deferred variable annuity.

Description: The purpose of this discussion is to introduce a few additional points and discuss how different assumptions will alter the results in some cases.

Description: New Zealand is about to launch its first variable annuity with guaranteed lifetime withdrawal benefits. The product design is mindful of the lessons from the financial crisis in the United States, Europe and Japan.

Description: The article summarizes PLRs 201515001 and 201519001, in which the IRS addressed the treatment of a non-qualified deferred annuity contract under the investor control doctrine and other applicable rules. The contract provides a guaranteed lifetime withdrawal benefit and investment options that correspond to “public” mutual funds. The IRS concluded that the investor control doctrine will apply to treat the contract purchaser as the owner of the mutual fund shares for federal income tax purposes. The IRS also addressed certain other tax aspects of the arrangement. The effect of the rulings is that the contract will be taxed similarly to a contingent deferred annuity (where the policyholder holds the mutual fund shares in his or her own brokerage account), while being structured like a traditional deferred variable annuity (where the insurance company holds the shares in its separate account).