Description: Discuss a comparison of the U.S. general and insured population mortality experience and how COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 excess deaths impacted the populations differently. Discover the population mortality experience in the UK with a focus on the recent emergence of excess deaths for non-COVID causes. The long-term implications on the insured population will also be explored. Wrap up with a discussion of different conditions of long COVID, including organ impairments.

Description: 2020 and 2021 presented numerous challenges to life and annuity product development actuaries. External forces required carriers to rethink underwriting requirements and risk assessment in real time. Alterations in regulatory frameworks and statutory requirements forced changes to product development priorities while alterationsin the work environment forced changes in how work routines were structured. This session will bring together a group of life and annuity stakeholders to discuss how they addressed these and other challenges, and how their work will be impacted going forward.

Description: The strategic plan of the Society of Actuaries (SOA) Research Institute includes several important research goals. One goal is to support emerging issues and topics in established practice areas and encourage the development of research projects that have a strong impact on the actuarial profession. The primary purpose is to select and fund high-quality research projects that directly educate members on applicable topics. Additionally, the SOA Research Institute desires to develop additional intellectual capital that serves the interest of the public and the profession’s stakeholders. The Research Executive Committee (REC) of the SOA Research Institute oversees the funding of the Emerging Issues Pool. This key source of research funding is used to sponsor projects that are beneficial to the entire profession, across practice area boundaries that may require funding levels beyond the normal annual funding budgets of research committees and sections. The REC is issuing this Request for Proposals (RFP) to fulfill the strategic goals of the organization through the use of this pool for funding new projects.

Description: Climate risk modeling is taking center stage. With businesses increasingly expected to show how they assess, adapt to, and mitigate the risks of climate change, companies are asking: What is the right climate risk modeling approach for our business?

Description: Just in the recent two years, COVID-19 has demonstrated very impressively that a pandemic is not something for which one can fully prepare. However, what makes a pandemic so special and difficult to manage compared to other low frequency and high severity events such as volcanic eruptions or tsunami damage? Frank Schillerexplains what makes a pandemic so different, viz, information uncertainty, exponential growth, and time lags.

Description: Overview of guest editorials and special issues in the Annals of Actuarial Science, dealing with great societal challenges that the actuarial profession is responding to.

Description: Excel file supporting weather extremes report.

Description: Excel supporting spreadsheet.

Description: Actuarial weather extremes, November 2020

Description: This report examines three extreme weather phenomena in December 2020: Continuing drought in the Western United States, heavy precipitation, snowfall, and flood in the Eastern U.S., and ranking 2020 global land and ocean temperature vs previous annual averages of the last 141 years.