Description: Recent reports have expressed concern over historically high levels of corporate indebtedness, with an increasing share of investment-grade debt now in the BBB category, just above speculative-grade. This session will explore trends in the corporate debt market, with a focus on the risks and opportunities for portfolios in the current environment.

Description: Panelists discuss issues faced by the insurance-company portfolio manager, how to measure or value interest-rate risk, some of the new cash investment vehicles available, the futures and options market, construction of a synthetic security, and the review of mortgage-backed securities under new analytical techniques. From the 1987 Record of Society of Actuaries, Vol. 13, No. 3.

Description: 1993 SOA Meeting, Quebec. This session discussion is about accounting, collateralized mortgage obligation structures, hybrid bonds, federal income taxes, fair-value disclosures and derivatives.

Description: Interest rates steadily declining ever since the Volcker Fed tackled inflation in the early eighties. Ten years of stimulating monetary policy brought new lows. We should have braced ourselves for a return to neutrality, but that concept remains elusive. We will explore structural issues that have brought rates to these low levels and the potential impacts on the insurance business.

Description: 1994 SOA Spring Meeting, San Francisco. In this interactive presentation, the panel fielded investment questions from the audience. Prepared and audience questions included: 1. What is the FLUX measure? What's it supposed to do for regulators and insurance companies? 2. What sort of things really went on that caused the difficulties at Executive Life, First Capital, and Mutual Benefit? 3. What are some examples of hedges that you would recommend for a $100 million SPDA portfolio to try and combat the effects of rising interest rates? 4. Given the changes that experienced in interest rates, what's that been doing to the durations of typical interest-sensitive liabilities? 5. What do you do to hedge with derivatives or whatever if interest rates are going down? 6. What level of asset-liability matching do companies usually target? How do regulators view this?

Description: [Title should have been 'Communication by Actuaries WITH Investment Professionals ....'] Actuaries working with investments must communicate not only with investment professionals, but also with senior managers and board members with non-financial backgrounds. Panelists show and critique examples of communicating such information using statistics and graphs. From the 2002 Record of Society of Actuaries, Volume 28, No. 3. Session 136PD of the Boston Annual Meeting.

Description: Insurance companies utilize derivatives in a variety of ways to manage and mitigate risks that are inherent in their investment or liability portfolios. They can be characterized by three main features: medium long-term duration; large volumes; and significant market risk exposure. Given the persistent low interest rate environment across the curve since the 2008 financial crisis, large companies need to hedge their liabilities, as illustrated by the significant recent increase from $786 billion as of fiscal year 2010 to $1,885 billion as of FY 2014 by insurance companies.As the Variable Annuities (VA) guarantees embedded within those liabilities hold a strong convex risk profile with respect to the underlying stock, VA carriers need to buy some convex hedge assets such as options to match the liability risk profile to improve hedge effectiveness, implying the growing cost of hedging. Such market impact of the quantity on the cost of hedging is further magnified in the recent period with the short-lived, but sharp transitions from low volatility to high volatility, when market volatility suddenly increases, even when there were no well-known fundamental catalysts. This partially stems from the growing managed volatility funds embedded within VA ($bn 400).VA carriers willing to trade a large quantity of options will see such market impact as an important dilemma, as the cost of placing one large order to close position will be far greater than the sum of infinitely small orders differed in time. In that context, managing market impact requires introducing an explicit market impact function, the influence of which the agent will try to minimize. The effect on hedge asset prices significantly depends on whether there is or not significant delta hedging activity. In case of no significant delta hedging activity, the risk appetite has a significant influence on the optimal execution strategy. If there is significant delta hedging activity, the optimal trading involve

Description: This session from the 1984 SOA New York City Meeting discusses financial futures and options, an example of using options to hedge a risk, investment optimization and taxation. From Record of the Society of Actuaries Vol. 10, No. 3

Description: 1993 SOA Annual Meeting, New York. This session discussion is about asset prepayment assumptions for regulatory cash-flow testing. Topics included: 1. The prepayment characteristics of corporate bonds with embedded options. 2. How much prepayment and redemption activity has taken place within that market. 3. Techniques that corporate bond issuers have used to retire debt prior to maturity. 4. The investment implications. 5. The impact that prepayments have on MBS price and return performance. 6. The challenges of prepayment modeling.

Description: This session 10 of the 1990 Valuation Actuary Symposium is a panel discussion on collateralized mortgage obligations and other asset projections.