Description: An article from the Chairman of the Product Development Section Council with a brief discussion of plans for the section for the upcoming year 2009.

Description: discussion of the Product Development Section’s plans for the annual meeting.

Description: Professional development opportunities from the Society of Actuaries.

Description: In the U.S. in the late 1980’s, the Internal Revenue Service was taking steps to try to institute explicit boundaries for the actuarial assumptions being used in 'funding' valuations to determine the appropriate contribution levels for small pension plans. This article was written in the context of that environment, to defend the rights of actuaries to their professional judgement. The courts eventually supported this perspective.

Description: Josh summarizes key findings distilled from last year’s Pension Section Survey, and reports on a fifteen-item action plan that was ratified by the Pension Section Council in February for near-term implementation.

Description: This document is a listing of workshops and other sessions from the 1991 Meeting of the Society of Actuaries, held June 3-5 in Colorado Springs, for which no written record was made, with the names of those who served as leaders. From the Record of Society of Actuaries, Volume 17, No. 3B.

Description: Shapiro 1990 documented some of the criteria used by actuaries when selecting the assumptions for actuarial valuations. He noted, however, that many of these criteria are often were in conflict with one another. This paper uses expected utility theory to model this process of choosing actuarial assumption when faced with potentially conflicting criteria. The three criteria considered are prudence, best estimate and conservativeness.

Description: This paper presents reviews of: 'Life Insurance' 11th Edition by Black & Skipper, 'Protecting Against Inflation - and Maximizing Yield' by Bragg, 'Megamistakes: Forecasting and the Myth of Technological Change' by Schnaars, 'The Value of Pensions in Divorce: What It Is and How to Use It' by Snyder, 'Episodes in the Life of Charles Francis McCay - Academic, Actuary, Author and Businessman' by Kellam, 'APL the Language and Its Actuarial Applications' by Stiers, Goovaerts & Kerf, 'Actuarial Mathematics', Vol. 35 edited by Panjer.

Description: In this article, the author discusses the benefits of writing an article that is jointly authored by you and another person. The article discusses different situations where the result can be an article that meets your strategic objectives, and also helps another business professional move ahead.

Description: A continuation of the conversation about principle-based reserves (PBR). Actuaries and an attorney discuss revisit federal-income tax-related issues as they relate to PBR.