Description: A collection of essays in response to a call for essays aimed to gather perspectives, opinions and data on how to advance the state of effective retirement planning to assist individuals, actuaries, financial advisors, employers, and other stakeholders.

Description: As one highly rated financial firm after another blows up, what is the right conclusion to draw about enterprise risk management ERM? Does the financial crisis of 2008-09 demonstrate its criticality, or does it bring the whole concept into disrepute?

Description: This article presents a hypothesis that the market cycles are primarily created by human actions, behavior and assumptions rather than by random variables. An analysis of main financial events over the last decade reveals that: a Every one of these events has had a human touch b The current financial crisis is an aftermath of the excessive economic boom during this period and c A new economy must emerge from human ingenuity and innovation.

Description: This paper considers the problem of actuaries acting as advisers to individuals. This activity is covered by regulations, discussed in the paper, that currently recognize other professions but not actuaries. The paper recommends that actuarial organizations lobby the relevant legislative and regulatory bodies to provide actuaries pursuing an investment-focused career path with the same exemption status as other professionals.

Description: Essay recommending establishing a consistent and actuarially sound foundation for assessing the costs and benefits of each and every current and new Medicare or other healthcare proposal.

Description: Suggestions on reforms to avert another financial crisis by placing greater emphasis on Board competencies, particularly related to banking and risk management.

Description: When regulators examine financial institutions, one of the most important areas on which they focus is capital requirements. This essay argues that we can’t push for neither too high nor too low default probabilities. Regulate too high and you introduce rigidity to the system: you choke the economy. Regulate too low and you introduce softness in your foundations: they cannot for long sustain the economy. Therefore, regulation should be set to provide a 'window for business'.

Description: Retirement income can be provided by Social Security, employer-provided pension plans, personal savings and family support. With the growth of Social Security and employer-provided pensions, and the decline in birth rates and marriage rates, the role of families in the U.S. retirement system has declined.

Description: This paper introduces a rich stochastic modeling framework for understanding risks in multiple-decrement contracts. The example in the paper is a 20-year Term insurance contract. Not only are mortality and lapsation considered stochastic, but the parameters governing them are. For example, mortality risk is composed of four risk elements, including error generated in the underwriting process, volatility around the best estimate, catastrophic events that impact mortality, and the trend in mortality improvement or deterioration. When stochastically modeled, the relative contribution and risk profile of each risk element can be evaluated. Generating stochastic mortality results provides a distribution of results that an organization faces and the severity and incidence of the tail events.