Description: 1993 SOA Meeting, Quebec. This session is about life company solvency. The speakers discussed whether they believe the industry has stabilized and gave us their perceptions on what the future holds and what companies can do to remain solvent. Topics included: 1. A quick solvency review. 2. Summary of the Duff & Phelps rating process. 3. The key issue facing the life insurance industry today - real estate. 4. How a rating agency views and uses RBC. 5. How to use ratings or, basically, what ratings are and what they aren't. 6. The future of the life, health, and annuity industry with respect to solvency. 7. The capital markets generally and their view of the life sector specifically.

Description: This session from the 1983 SOA Spring Meeting reviews the need for strategic planning in the insurance industry. It discusses investigating the market, carrying out the strategic planning and the problems that may be encountered.

Description: This session discussion is about deterioration in claims-paying ability, financial well-being of life insurance companies, benchmark surplus standards, key operation ratios, credit analysis of asset holdings, market view of stock companies, adequacy of capital in the industry, appropriate risk/reward posture in the industry, advice to management, outlook for the various business and views on surplus relief devices. From Record of the Society of Actuaries Vol. 15, No. 3A.

Description: This panel at the SOA 1998 Maui I Spring Meeting discusses issues surrounding the growing trend among insurance companies to hire outside money managers including rationale, selection criteria, performance measures and managing the outside manager.

Description: This session from the 1983 SOA Spring Meeting presents the conclusions from case study workshops on strategic planning. Two studies included are the Progressive Insurance and Guardian Life Insurance Company case studies.

Description: Businesses across the board have been drastically impacted by the effects of COVID-19 over the course of 2020, and insurance was not immune. Perhaps most relevant to this industry’s current capital and liquidity concern is the prevailing low interest rate environment. This has been a global trend in the last decade, and treasury rates in much of the developed world are at or near zero. Reduced investment returns limit an insurer’s ability to achieve their desired return on equity, eliminating previously profitable strategies that depended on the leverage of life and annuity balance sheets. Focus and activity have instead shifted to other methods to counteract the low interest rate markets and accompanying capital strain. Examples include increased mergers and acquisitions (M&A) activity within the insurance industry and an increasing focus by private equity firms in the insurance market for asset-intensive products, both of which reflect the goal of increasing yield rates on capital.

Description: This session from the 1983 SOA Spring Meeting reviews Acquisitions and Mergers. From Record of Society of Actuaries, Vol. 9, No. 1.

Description: This session from the 1984 SOA Toronto Meeting discusses employee benefit aspects of mergers/acquisitions/spin-offs, looking at pension benefit liability, other employee benefit liability, other executive compensation plan liability and Multi-employer pension plan amendment requirements. From Record of the Society of Actuaries Vol. 10, No. 4A

Description: At this session of the SOA 2004 Annual Meeting, the authors of a text on mergers and acquisitions each discuss their contribution to the book, which covers all aspects of an acquisition.

Description: 1994 SOA Spring Meeting, Orlando. This panel described the less obvious financial exposures and qualitative issues affecting an insurance company's financial strength. In addition, panelists discussed risk-based capital as a means of solvency assessment.