Description: This report looks at identifying drivers of systemic risk to China’s insurance industry and develops a measurement method for systemic risk as well as systemic risk dependence between the insurance industry and other industries.

Description: Lower costs doesn't necessarily help ACA markets. It often makes things worse.

Description: Results of the PBITT Working Group annual Variable Annuity Survey.

Description: Read the February 2020 issue of Retirement Section News published by the Retirement Section. Newsletters provide practical information for the working actuary, articles on trends that impact sections and news about section activities.

Description: Technology is transforming the retirement space and more changes are expected in the future. Join a panel of experts to discuss what are the opportunities, trends and challenges associated with new technologies in the retirement landscape and how it is expected to impact consumers, if we can enable their successful integration.

Description: Over the last few years, many direct companies have started inforce management programs and are now navigating what actions can be taken to optimize the business. At the same time, the legal, compliance, and regulatory environments are also changing. The presenters will explore the development and implementation of programs such as changing non-guaranteed elements or efforts to improve experience while considering the changing compliance environment, including New York Regulation 210, ASOP2 and litigation challenges.

Description: Digital is the main reason over half of the companies on the Fortune 500 have disappeared since 2000." (CEO Accenture). We cannot be sure how global technology megatrends will disrupt the life insurance industry, but we can be certain that the future will not look like today. As large quantities of available data are no longer owned by insurance companies and statistical techniques become more accessible to non-statisticians, the pressure to keep up with technological advancement increases. Life actuaries must think critically about and be prepared for the coming changes and position themselves as leaders in an industry lagging behind in new technology adoption.

Description: The insurance industry has a lot to learn from academia's missteps. With predictive analytics assuming an ever-expanding role in risk modeling, carriers would be well-served to establish practices that mitigate the creation of faulty models. Hear practical advice on how to mitigate the risks of overfitting, with a focus on how to translate complex policyholder behavior experience data for long-term products into behavioral models using company- and industry-level data.

Description: View the ERM Case Study.

Description: Near the end of a pension plan's lifespan, after benefit accruals have ceased and the plan has reached fully funded status, a plan sponsor has the option to begin the plan termination process immediately or to maintain the plan for an extended period of time (often referred to as 'hibernation' as an alternative to termination). While immediate termination appeals to some plan sponsors, others choose hibernation for a number of reasons, including paternalism, fiduciary obligations, perceived cost differentials or simple inertia.

Description: Despite the slowdown in the economy, premium growth in emerging markets fared relatively well compared to advanced insurance markets. Yet, there exists an enormous range in premium density and penetration between emerging and advanced markets. The presenters explore the demand side and attempt to lay out possible solutions to narrow the protection gap.

Description: Electronic Health Records, or EHRs, are a major worldwide initiative to eliminate paper recordings – including Attending Physician Statements (APSs) – of an individual’s medical history and current treatment.

Description: Read the January 2020 issue of International News published by the International Section. Newsletters provide practical information for the working actuary, articles on trends that impact sections and news about section activities.

Description: The presenters will highlight differences in mortality that result from socioeconomic issues. Topics will include the differences in cause-specific mortality among different socioeconomic classes, trends in these gaps over time, and recommendations for reducing inequalities in life expectancy in the future.

Description: The actuarial profession is at a tipping point and a combination of disruptive technologies and external pressures are creating a unique opportunity to move from results producer to insightful adviser. For a prudent but forward-looking professional, this is exciting and scary in equal measure. The ability to process large masses of business data to make more accurate calculations has become one of the most sought-after skills for leaders across all industries, including insurance.<br><br>The presenters will introduce current data technologies used to manage, process and visualize data. They will cover solutions like Microsoft BI, Tableau, Amazon Redshift, Hadoop, Alteryx, Python, etc. and their applications in data, process improvement, automation, reporting and predictive analytics. In particular, they will explore management reporting and how it leverages data analytics to help business leaders with strategic decisions making, how to evaluate the effectiveness of management reporting structures, drivers of change and ways to improve them, and proposed steps toward entrenching this dynamic and insightful approach to management reporting in which insurance leaders can have confidence.

Description: Baseline and "what if"/stressed projections of cash flows, financial statements and capital requirements are critical inputs for a range of business purposes: forecasts, risk management, liquidity management, strategic decision making, etc. Forward-looking projections have historically been inefficient and were performed in silos, making it difficult to scale the process as CFOs and CROs ask for more. The presenters discuss challenges of the forecast process and opportunities to meet desired future capabilities. They will also discuss "what if" analysis and ways to support production of forward-looking projections for "what if" analysis in an efficient way.

Description: Read about the Demographic Change in Mexico - An Opportunity and Challenge for the Insurance Industry.

Description: Read the February 2020 issue of Risks & Rewards newsletter published by the Investment Section. Newsletters provide practical information for the working actuary, articles on trends that impact sections and news about section activities.

Description: There is widespread acknowledgement in the insurance industry that cyber risk remains an untamed and seemingly ever-growing beast. It is also unique in the family of risk exposures faced by insurers in that it is both an emerging risk and an emerged risk. What are companies doing to keep on top of this risk? What are actuaries doing to contribute to cyber risk management, and what can we learn from other industries and disciplines?

Description: A feature article discussing the financial opportunities of investing in gold.

Description: This session meets the needs of life insurance actuaries who are focused on experience studies, assumption setting, and/or product development. The presenters will use industry data to illustrate how policyholders react to product design, such as premium jumps in the PLT period and UL with high interest rate illustration, and trends in the life insurance market, including the introduction of smoking distinguished rates and the shift towards an increasing number of preferred underwriting classes.

Description: Predictive analytics is impacting various actuarial disciplines. During this session, we will discuss how predictive analytics could impact and enhance retirement and pensions, along with how pension/retirement actuaries can utilize various enhanced analytical techniques. <em>This breakfast is open to all meeting attendees free of charge. If you plan to attend, you must register in advance.

Description: Actuaries continue to expand their breadth and depth of skills, business acumen, and industry knowledge. The presenters will share the many resources available to actuaries who wish to expand their reach and impact, including an overview of the resources available through the SOA, how it monitors emerging actuarial trends and acts on a changing professional landscape, how it identifies appropriate research projects, and how the association strives to deliver actuarial education to ensure its credentials are prestigious, relevant and globally recognized. If you want to engage with the actuarial profession on a deeper level, this session will help you understand the structure and will inspire you to grow yourself and the profession in a positive, meaningful way.

Description: Predictive modeling continues to gain traction in the life insurance industry with the rapid growth of available data and maturity of open source tools. New methods and technology in predictive analytics have enabled the evaluation of extremely large data more quickly and allow us to incorporate features previously not considered. The presenters will provide background on predictive modeling tools and algorithms utilized by actuaries and data scientists for life insurance, highlighting applications from marketing to underwriting.

Description: This third session in the Munich Re series continues with an exploration of responses to the changing workplace landscape from those inside the industry. The presenters will focus on practical approaches to identifying new opportunities, and on ways in which traditional products and sales channels are changing to meet emerging needs. Are voluntary benefits still relevant? Yes, but they are changing. While the first session provided an overview of the future workplace, this session will provide an overview of the current and evolving voluntary benefits market. Sales processes and products will be challenged to change to keep up with the new workplace dynamic. The presenters share strategies for developing products and sales channels that are robust and flexible enough to address evolving customer needs.

Description: Implementation of GAAP Targeted Improvements will impact data, reporting, resourcing and governance. This provides an ideal opportunity to rethink some of the data and reporting processes currently in place and how they can be improved to create effective and scalable solutions for the future. With the transition date already behind us for public companies and preparation in motion, we will share insights into how organizations have started to tackle implementing the GAAP Targeted Improvements. The presenters will share insights on data and process challenges and possible solutions, as well as a 'smart compliance' approach to comply with the most valuable aspects of compliance. Resourcing strategies for successful implementation will also be discussed.

Description: The presenters will address innovations in health and wellness designed to mitigate and/or manage mortality risk. The presenters will briefly review the latest research on the leading causes of death and share ways that life insurers and insurtech partnerships are using technology, customer engagement and scientific advances to enhance/extend the lives of policyholders. The presenters will draw from industry research and reinsurer studies and from the latest initiatives in health and wellness innovations.

Description: Legislative changes and the economic environment have created a need for plan sponsors to understand and manage pension risk and volatility. Dynamic asset allocation glidepaths reduce risk as plans become better funded. But what about the risk that plan sponsors face when their plans are underfunded? The presenters will discuss the challenges of managing pension risk when assets don't keep pace with liabilities.

Description: Hear an overview of InsurTech trends and challenges globally. Then, presenters will dive deeper to talk about InsurTech's application in insurance product distribution via smartphones and insurance company's risk selection, risk evaluation, risk control and the related challenges brought to actuaries. Specific applications and cases will be presented.

Description: Papers: Quantification and Management of Longevity Risk in China – Johnny Li, FSA, ACIA, Ph.D. - Univeristy of Melbourne, Kenneth Q. Zhou, ASA, ACIA, Ph.D. - Arizona State University, Wai-Sun Chan, FSA, CERA, Ph.D. - The Chinese University of Hong Kong A Value-Based Longevity Index for Hedging Retirement Income Portfolios – Kevin Krahe, Jonathan Ziveyi, Ph.D., Michael Sherris, FSA, FIAA, FIA, Andres M. Villegas, Ph.D. - UNSW Australia

Description: Read the December 2019 issue of Predictive Analytics and Futurism published by the Predictive Analytics and Futurism Section. Newsletter provide practical information for the working actuary, articles on trends that impact sections and news about section activities.

Description: View the Exam LFM Intro Study Note.

Description: Papers: Rotation of the Age Pattern of Mortality Improvements in European Union Member States – Peter Vekas Corvinus University of Budapest Short and Long Term Dynamics of Cause-specific Mortality Rates Using the Cointegration Analysis – Severine Arnold, Ph.D.; Viktoriya Glushko – University of Lausanne

Description: View the FAP Modules Objectives.

Description: Papers: Calibrating Mortality Processes with Trend Changes to Multi-Population Data – Matthias Börger; Justin Schoenfeld; Johannes Schupp – Ulm University The Mathematical Mechanism of Biological Aging – Boquan Cheng, Bruce Jones, FSA, FCIA, Ph.D. Xiaoming Liu and Jiandong Ren – University of Western Ontario

Description: Papers: Chronic Diseases and Longevity Risk: An Application to Type II Diabetes Insurance Products – Hsin-Chung Wang, Ph.D. - Aletheia University; Jack C. Yue, ASA, Ph.D. – National Chengchi University; Ting-Chung Chang - Chihlee University of Technology Understanding Multimorbidities - Sam Gutterman, FSA, CERA, FCA, FCAS, HONFIA, MAAA

Description: In this session, morbidity and life expectancy trends are discussed. In addition, a case study in R on how to model the uncertainty associated with incidence of disability, disabled and active deaths and other terminations is presented.

Description: In this session, attendees will learn to model historical mortality rates and to forecast their possible future scenarios, using a freely available and well-tested toolkit written in open source R. The core of the toolkit is implemented in the R package StMoMo (https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=StMoMo) and enables a practitioner to derive best estimate and measurements of uncertainty using academically robust demographic and actuarial mortality projection models.

Description: View the 2020 Living to 100 Abstracts by Session PDF.

Description: The article shared results from a survey conducted in May of best-estimate VA assumptions as of year-end 2018. Specifically, the discussion focused on lapse, utilization and separate account return assumptions. The results show that a considerable range of practice across assumptions used by the industry for variable annuities. There is a propensity to use complex assumptions to better match the underlying complexity in the products with the behavior expected from policyholders in a dynamic and volatile economic environment.

Description: Read the December 2019 issue of The Financial Reporter published by the Financial Reporting Section. Newsletters provide practical information for the working actuary, articles on trends that impact sections and news about section activities.

Description: Report summarizing the results of the 2019 PBITT UL with Secondary Guarantees Survey.

Description: View the Exam ERM Intro Study Note.

Description: A literature review report that looks at research on how artificial intelligence is used in actuarial work.

Description: Results of 2019 survey to their subgroup members.

Description: This report provides methodological tools for an insurer to better understand the potential losses incurred by autonomous vehicles in the context of rollover risk.

Description: This session will discuss strategy and tactics for becoming good stewards of consumer/customer data. Topics will include various techniques, such as anonymization, pseudonymization, tokenization, and the merging of disparate, de-identified data sources.

Description: Business success in the future depends on assumptions we make today. However, we operate in a dynamic environment and cannot know with certainty what lies ahead. Addressing the challenge requires a synergy between data science, expert judgement, and decision making to spot changing drivers of key risks and respond with appropriate business action. We will be presenting development of such an "ecosystem" technically enabled by Natural Language Processing to monitor and detect signals from news streams. NLP is of increasing importance for insurance companies. Additional application examples are available in session 23.

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: Read the November 2019 issue of Actuary of the Future, published by the Actuary of the Future Section. Newsletters provide practical information for the working actuary, articles on trends that impact sections and news about section activities.

Description: Investment risk management has become a core competency of insurance companies, and much has been discussed on this topic. This session examines the current investment risk management practices such as product line specific hedging and macro hedging, with a focus on what still remains to be addressed—whether the tradeoff of addition risk management is worthwhile.

Description: The SOA is pleased to make available a report updating the 2012 risk assessment performed by Porteous et al. The report also provided an economic capital analysis for a stylized US plan with the same member profile and the USS provisions modified to reflect a typical US DB plan.

Description: In this session, we will explore investment solutions that aim to maintain the long-term viability of a pension plan, with considerations on hedging interest rates, credit, inflation, longevity and other risks, while accounting for the many particularities associated with underlying liabilities and their corresponding ramifications.

Description: Article describes how to write effective model documentation

Description: Read the November 2019 issue of The Modeling Platform, published by the Modeling Section. Newsletters provide practical information for the working actuary, articles on trends that impact sections and news about section activities.

Description: This article is the first installment of a three-part series that aims to provide an overview of ESGs and will focus on the general motivation for stochastic modeling, its advantages and its limitations. Future articles will further break down the key factors of ESGs and the application of these factors to better understand the Academy Interest Rate Generator (AIRG).

Description: Representing a large indexed annuity writer, the speakers will discuss the growth and evolution of the market for index annuity products. Moreover, the challenges that growth has introduced and how those challenges are being met. While much of the market consists of simple, accumulation-oriented S&P 500 based strategies with 0% return floors, a significant portion of industry sales come from more complex products with highly customized index strategies and other features, such as living benefit guarantees. Attendees will gain a broad understanding of the indexed annuity market, product and features, operational difficulties in risk management arising from product design, and how actuarial and hedge professionals are managing these issues.

Description: The NAIC has adopted revised VM-21 and AG43 for variable annuities, effective Jan. 1, 2020. The panel of presenters will provide background and an overview of the revisions, discuss detailed aspects of the new CTE Amount Standard Projection and prescribed assumptions, as well as discuss implementation considerations and the implications to hedging. In addition, the panelists will share progress on VM-23, principle-based reserves for non-variable annuities.

Description: Representing a large indexed annuity writer, the speakers will discuss the growth and evolution of the market for index annuity products. Moreover, the challenges that growth has introduced and how those challenges are being met. While much of the market consists of simple, accumulation-oriented S&P 500 based strategies with 0% return floors, a significant portion of industry sales come from more complex products with highly customized index strategies and other features, such as living benefit guarantees. Attendees will gain a broad understanding of the indexed annuity market, product and features, operational difficulties in risk management arising from product design, and how actuarial and hedge professionals are managing these issues.

Description: A brief overview of recent AIT research papers in summarized format.

Description: In this session, a company will share its experience on managing risks underlying the equity-linked insurance guarantees and what lessons were learned over these years as it adapted its strategies to suit the current market environment.

Description: An exploration of drivers, cohorts and dynamics for policyholder behavior for VA and FIA based on industry experience data, including changes in recent years and the emergence of long-term data in key areas. We will also discuss critical elements to developing a sustainable and coherent framework to translate this complex experience data into assumption models.

Description: View the Spring 2020 CFE – Strategic Decision Making Exam Syllabi.

Description: This note is designed to provide an overview of the CFE Track and this exam .

Description: This note is intended to aid candidates in reading Business Dynamics by John D. Sterman.

Description: View the Spring 2020 Group and Health—Finance & Valuation, Canada Syllabi.

Description: View the Spring 2020 Group and Health—Finance & Valuation, Canada Introductory Study Note.

Description: View the Spring 2020 Quantitative Finance and Investment—Portfolio Management Syllabi.

Description: View the Spring 2020 QFI – Quantitative Finance Exam Syllabi.

Description: View the Spring 2020 QFI – Investment Risk Management Exam Syllabi.

Description: View the Spring 2020 ERM – Enterprise Risk Management Exam Syllabi.

Description: The speakers will discuss the replication of long-term options, including a discussion of issues such as liquidity, transaction costs, slippage, impact of policyholder behavior, and machine learning algorithms to improve hedge effectiveness.

Description: The speaker will discuss the training of neural networks to compute future Greeks of liabilities (or options) without the use of nested stochastics.