Description: Discusses the duality of the market-consistent and traditional actuarial approaches to pricing and valuations, and the need to exercise flexibility of thought to reconcile the opposing viewpoints.

Description: This article discusses actuarial appraisal value and explores the relationship between cost of capital, market fair value of assets and liabilities, and the option pricing method.

Description: The paper explores developments through 2006 in the application of market-consistent concepts to the measurement of fair values of liabilities for financial reporting purposes. A set of criteria is presented that should be useful in the evaluation of proposed fair value measurement approaches where inputs based on prices observed in an active market with reliable transaction prices are not available. Based on these criteria, one approach is examined that might serve as a basis for the fair value measurement of the liability of life insurance contracts and other financial instruments issued by insurers.

Description: Here we are led to draw a distinction between “wild” markets and “free” markets. A wild market is unregulated and unscrutinized. Information flows are purposely impeded for competitive reasons and reduced to trickles from rumor and espionage. No one knows what anyone else is doing, and pricing is blind and haphazard. In such a market, there are no safeguards against anticompetitive behavior and no guarantees that the market will clear. The only guarantee is that there will be liquidity crises.

Description: This session 5PD of the 1998 SOA Annual Meeting panel examines the recent developments and emerging thinking on efforts to explore and develop a fair value or market value based accounting approach. From the Record of the Society of Actuaries, Vol. 24, No. 3.

Description: Discussion rebutting the Dec. 2004 issue of The Financial Reporter article titled, “On the Fair Value of Insurance Liabilities,” authored by Don Solow. That article expressed disagreement with the position of the International Accounting Standards Board and the Financial Accounting Standards Board to reflect the value of “own credit risk” in the fair valuation of insurance liabilities.

Description: This is a continuation of a discussion about the the theoretically correct treatment of the credit put the policyholder writes when purchasing an insurance contract.

Description: Discussion of progress made at the NAIC Fall National Meeting on amendments to the Standard Valuation Law, the Valuation Manual - particularly with regard to principles-based reserves, and The Academy of Actuaries work on Risk Based Capital re C-e Phase III.

Description: “It’s interesting to note that, given the past year’s reversal of fortunes in the stock markets, all the media rap about heated inquiries around back-dating options has stopped.”

Description: 1993 SOA Spring Meeting, Boston. The session is about fair-value financial reporting. It discussed market value/present value, economic value/value added, Financial Accounting Standards Board initiatives, and Europe 1992.