Description: Python is the leading programming language for data science. Python programming is one skill that actuaries should acquire. It facilitates analytic work, and the available visualization tools help to communicate ideas. In this article, I use a traditional actuarial problem, mortality modeling, as an example.

Description: Easy access computing power is harnessed to approximate ruin probabilities. The dynamics of the traditional insurance model are stated in the form of period to period constraints. This allows the development of a life-table with the survival probabilities for a given set of parameters. Given the spreadsheet approach of the model, sensitivity analysis to study the impact of different parameter values and loss variable distributions can be easily implemented.

Description: At this session, experts will provide an overview of current statutory valuation issues pertaining to life and annuity products. The focus is on activities of the American Academy of Actuaries relative to principle-based approaches, but other matters will be covered, including the status of the NAIC valuation manual, life risk-based capital, developments at the NAIC affecting life insurance companies, and practice issues for appointed actuaries.

Description: This paper is from the Transactions of Society of Actuaries 1956 Volume 8, Number 20. It was presented at the 1956 Spring Meetings of the Society of Actuaries for discussion. The author presents an outline of how difficulties in the determination of a frequency distribution of the expected costs may be overcome by, in part, applying the concept of using a series of random numbers with a view of making mortality studies for each life in a group of annuitants. The paper also presents the results of some experiments which were designed to discover whether or not the concept could be conducted on an IBM 650 electronic data processing machine.

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 paper investigates the implications of using the Basel II motivated Advanced Measurement Approaches as a method to assess operational risk capital charges for banks and insurance companies with regard to U.S. regulations. The AMA developed in the paper uses actuarial loss models complemented by the extreme value theory to determine the empirical probability distribution function of the aggregated capital charges in the context of various classes of copulas. From Actuarial Research Clearing House, 2006.

Description: The purpose of this paper is to understand characteristics of a household that drive life insurance demand with more sophisticated analytical techniques. The analysis is based on the Survey of Consumer Finances data, a probability sample of the U.S. population. Household demand of two types of insurance, term life insurance and whole life insurance, is examined jointly. We model both the frequency and the severity of demand for insurance building on the work of Lin and Grace 2007 by using covariates that they developed.

Description: Logistic-type models for the force of mortality like those introduced by Perks or Kannisto provide better fit to mortality data of people aged over 85 than Makeham’s model where the force of mortality increases exponentially with age. However, the difficulty in estimating their parameters by the maximum likelihood method makes their use less popular among actuaries. For Kannisto’s model, this paper proposes a weighted least-squares estimator which can easily be calculated with any regression software. The estimator is shown to be consistent, asymptotically unbiased and normally distributed. For Perks’ model, using a Taylor’s series expansion, the estimation problem is again reduced to a least-squares problem. The various estimators proposed in the paper are compared numerically using Canadian mortality data.

Description: This presentation compares continuous-time multi-factor affine cohort mortality models and presents estimation results for an affine multi-factor, multi-cohort mortality model.

Description: Authored by a MIB Solutions team of Tom Rhodes, Stuart Klugman, Marianne Purushotham and Stacy Gill, the report summarizes the results of a study on the application and adoption of credibility theory within the life insurance and annuity industry. In addition to the report, numerical examples related to the application of credibility to company mortality and lapse data are provided in the four Excel files. This excel spreadsheet is a numerical example relating to the application of Credibility for mortality - Limited Fluctuation Method. Please see the SOA website research section for the full report on Credibity Theory Practices.