Description: This section contains book reviews and a select bibliography. From Transactions of Society of Actuaries 1973, Vol. 25, Pt. 1, No. 73. Book topics include statistics, quantitative methods for determining IBNR, and Investing for a Financial Institution. Other books on actuarial and insurance topics are briefly discussed.

Description: This session 15 PD of the Toronto Spring Meeting includes an update on specific approaches adopted by Canadian insurers and regulators to deal with capital guarantees on segregated fund products, capital modeling in the Canadian banking industry, and emerging issues using these techniques in the U.S. From the Record of the Society of Actuaries, Volume 27, No. 2, Session

Description: This article is a continuance of a series on Canadian federal government statistical agencies. From The Actuary Vol. 24, No. 4

Description: The attached report presents the results of a survey conducted by the Society of Actuaries Mortality and Underwriting Survey Committee in July of 2008 under the following categories: 1. Modeling Mortality Risk. 2. Use of Reinsurance to Manage Mortality. 3. Retention / Large Case Management. 4. Catastrophe Reinsurance. 5. Mortality Concentration of Risk. 6. Catastrophic Bonds.

Description: Actuarial models have always been an important tool for helping companies project future results and understand risks. As complex models have started to become critical components of the reporting and compliance processes, however, models have vaulted to new levels of importance—and of scrutiny. This has raised everyone’s interest in the management of models, and by implication, in their ability to control the inherent model risk. From Small Talk Newsletter, Issue 37, January 2012.

Description: The purpose of this paper is to explore the rationale underlying the development of the family of linear compound graduation formulas. As the title suggests, this paper also attempts to defend the Min-Ro member of that family against the unqualified charge that it is a 'poor' graduation method. It concludes with a description of a simple modification of the Min-Ro, and an analysis of the improvement obtained by that modification.

Description: This paper evaluates the current practice of operational risk management in the insurance sector. Operational risk is nothing new in insurance, but, because of regulatory requirements, companies have initiated computation of risk capital for their operational losses. The current effort to manage operational risk is not a naturally evolving phenomenon, and operational risk, in the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision’s Basel II definition, is unlikely to be a significant cause of insurers’ failure. In addition, the current Basel II definition of operational risk is not suitable for the insurance sector. Consequently, the invention of models and tools based on the definition is incomplete and illusionary. My findings are based on the analysis of dozens of interviews with insurance industry professionals. I demonstrate the way operational risk is quantified in practice, show that the result obtained from this computation is of littl e use in managerial decision making and propose a set of policy recommendations illustrating the characteristics of operational risk in insurance. This study can be used as a platform for launching dialogues to initiate fresh thinking about operational risk in insurance beyond the current artificial and narrow boundaries.

Description: This session at the 2003 Valuation Actuary Symposium discusses advanced modeling techniques. Focus is on advanced liability and asset modeling issues, model distinctions between types of variable annuity guarantees, stochastic mortality, stochastic-on-stochastic modeling, and alternatives to stochastic modeling.

Description: This presentation is a panel discussion, session 56PD, from the 2004 Spring Meeting of the Society of Actuaries, held June 14-15 in San Antonio, TX. Tail risk, long recognized as important to insurance organizations, is being evaluated in a new light, with new approaches. The panelists review various approaches for measuring tail risk and how to price for tail risk using capital-market consistent techniques. From the Record of Society of Actuaries, Volume 30, No. 2.

Description: Abstract for a paper that develops links between credibility theory in actuarial science and longitudinal data models in statistics. The paper demonstrates that many additive credibility models can be expressed as special cases of the longitudinal data model.