Description: Reinsurance has been available for VA Guarantees for over 20 years. During that time, the reinsurance market for VA Guarantees has undergone frequent and sometimes violent transformations. Where does the market stand today? What forms and structures of reinsurance are available? Which VA Guarantee designs and features are easier to reinsure? Is reinsurance offered on both newly issued policies as well as in force/legacy books, and which vintages are difficult to reinsure? In an age of sophisticated hedging programs, what role does a reinsurer play in helping a VA writer manage this highly volatile risk? In this session, we will hear from a reinsurer that is actively writing new VA Guarantee reinsurance treaties in the U.S. and around the world, and from a VA writer that has successfully partnered with a reinsurer to enhance its VA product offering.

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: The speaker will share his insights into the hedging challenges faced by FIA and VA business in the current market environment.

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: Retirees will face the societal issue of inadequate savings with likely insufficient time to rectify the situation. They need immediate growth, but also the disciplines of risk management. They typically do not know how to engage with these two aspects in a harmonious manner on their own. Insurance companies are in the business of providing the solution but regulators have been clamping down in favor of simpler and more transparent products. In addition, the market reality over the last decade has been that insurers have stock betas at a multiple to the general markets with PE ratios well below. A panel of senior professionals from writers of retirement product business will present their vision of how the insurance industry can address the above dilemma, including the risks underlying the writing of the business, impact of financial markets, and regulations in the development of the business.

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

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: 1994 SOA Spring Meeting, San Francisco. This session explored the product design, pricing, and investment management strategies to mitigate the risk of long term minimum interest rates in a low interest rate environment.

Description: The presenters in this session will discuss the simultaneous use of DB and DC plans. With the continued growth of DC assets and the freezing of DB plans, it is increasingly common to see DB participants with a DC plan that is more than just supplemental. Because of this, it is important that retirement professionals see DB and DC plans as not just competitors for contributions, but as partners. The presenters will discuss how that partnership can work and how the presence of a DB plan can influence the design of DC solutions such as target date funds.

Description: The Delphi method is a non-quantitative forecasting approach that is most useful when other forecasting techniques appear to have limited value. The Society of Actuaries (SOA) has had some impressive results from Delphi studies (even quoted in the Wall Street Journal for their uncanny accuracy on long-range predictions). Attend this session to learn about this effective, yet underutilized method of leveraging the wisdom of crowds.