Description: The panel at this session of the SOA 2003 Washington, DC Spring Meeting look at the product development process with a focus on improving the success rate for new products and process improvement strategies.

Description: 1959 SOA Regional Meetings in Atlanta and San Francisco. These discussions on pensions examined the advantages of funding deferred profit sharing plans through a life insurance company and the problems involved in final average retirement plans.

Description: A discussion of, first, the three-year transition period for adopting principle-based reserves and how it might not apply to tax reserves, and second, the tax impact of adding investment options to in-force contracts.

Description: This is a discussion about new product developments, supplementary benefits - Accidental Death, Guaranteed Insurability and automatic inclusion of supplementary benefits rather than optional, product expense trends, considerations in setting commissions for policies with different characteristics, and analyzing and entering new markets.

Description: This abstract describes a paper that provides a quantitative framework in which two risk management strategies are mathematically formulated.

Description: This report is a summary based on current actuarial practices around the development and use of policyholder behavior assumptions including the use of dynamic modeling approaches. The research team surveyed and evaluated current practices in the industry; and highlighted current thinking on modeling human behaviors outside the life insurance industry. This project was sponsored by the SOA’s Financial Reporting Section and the Committee on Life Insurance Research.

Description: In this session, the presenters will discuss implementation challenges with US GAAP Long Duration Targeted Improvements (LDTI) for life and annuity products, and methods and changes to actuarial models their organizations use to overcome the challenges. Presenters will specifically discuss the following topics: The current GAAP reporting framework can create challenges with transparency for annuity insurers. Many annuity insurers report on adjusted earning measures in addition to US GAAP, believing the adjusted measures more accurately reflect earnings. Using a variable annuity framework, presenters will discuss key differences between GAAP and adjusted earnings measures, key challenges and their solutions for LDTI implementation, and the potential for LDTI to reduce the need for adjusted earnings measures and increase transparency. For FAS 60 based life products, insurers need to update and modernize the assumption setting process. Presenters will cover methods and the decision process whether to use existing data or new experience studies to review product experience and set assumptions. There is a lack of clarity and guidance for development and implementation of LDTI in a reinsurance framework. For reinsured life products, LDTI guidance is clear on the direct side of the financial statements, but the guidance is less clear on reinsurance ceded values. Presenters will discuss methods and changes to actuarial financial models that are needed in order to ensure the direct and ceded values are consistent.

Description: Presented at May 2002 Spring Meeting. Discusses the status of the second phase of the AAA C-3 Risk project. This project is leading to an updated NAIC filing requirement and is a step toward fair value. The specific focus is on equity risk and bond funds in the distribution tails. Products covered include variable life and annuities.

Description: The Canadian Institute of Actuaries held a panel discussion on product innovation at its June 1981 meeting. This article consists of edited excerpts from a document that was distributed in advance to stimulate discussion, and some remarks on the discussion that took place. This article discusses some of the products developed in response to the current high and volatile interest rate environment, such as flexible premium policies annuities and insurance and adjustable single premium policies.

Description: The Actuary Vol. 22, No. 7. This article describes the state of the insurance market in Japan in 1988. While traditional permanent policies abound, a variable life product was introduced in 1986.