Description: A discussion of issues and developments that threaten the collective confidence of the LTC insurance industry, including job cutting, changes in reporting requirements, and compliance audits.

Description: Editors discuss the articles in this issue.

Description: The impact of bond default risk on retirement benefit obligations describes how the probability default on a bond is similar to the probability of death for an annuitant. Bonds are used to cash flow match retirement obligations cash flows to funding from bond. Just as the probability of non-payment happens on the liability side, we can do the same with selected bonds. The end result may be an adjustment to the discount rates used.

Description: Employers who offer financial wellness programs that help younger employees plan for major life events could see improved employee retirement preparedness.

Description: An overview of the issues behind reimbursing providers on a bundled or packaged basis. The article presents the potential advantages offered by the proponents as well as the criticisms and obstacles to implementing this type of payment system.

Description: The author attempts to weave together biological and environmental explanations into the mathematical approaches developed over the past two centuries so as to, in the words of two earlier authors from the actuarial profession, reground the relationship of actuarial science with cellular biology and gerontology. Also examined is the extent to which increasing wealth and higher standards of education and health contribute to happiness.

Description: This study revisits and updates the termination experience of single family mortgages originated during the early 1980s under the purview of the FHA and insured under the FHA's Mutual Mortgage Fund Insurance MMIF. It also provides a summary of the lessons learned from the study.

Description: This session discusses potential developments in the 1980's with regards to: the impact of the force of competition on price levels and profit margins, growth in the market for life insurance and annuities, profit squeeze on stock companies due to continued high level of inflation, problems which will affect smaller stock companies abilities to compete and/or survive, changes in permanent versus term pricing practices and profit margins during the 1980's, changes in sources of profit and uses of free surplus, and continued attractiveness of insurers as acquisition targets.

Description: Presenter discusses issues related to alternative care, as well as SOA activity in regard to alternative care. From the Record of the Society of Actuaries, Vol. 24, No. 1.

Description: Latin America has acquired an economically strategic importance in the process of globalization that it did not have a decade ago. The region has attracted significant attention and investment by the international insurance industry. This article explores some issues related to the growth in supply of insurance companies capacity, the relatively slower pace of growth in consumer demand for their products, and the factors that companies can identify in forming their strategies to achieve their objectives.