Description: The article is a summary of Society of Actuaries report entitled “Annuity Market Pricing Approaches” sponsored by the Retirement Section Research Committee. The report examines the Canadian Institute of Actuaries (CIA) methodology of developing solvency valuation assumptions, compares it to methods used in the U.S., and considers if it could be used in other markets, such as U.S. group annuities or individual annuities

Description: Feature article discussing the variable annuity industry rebuilding and reinventing itself.

Description: This paper first derives the fair participation rate based on a fair value of the equity-indexed annuity EIA. Then using risk measures, a new participation rate is obtained, based on the tail loading of the hedging error distribution. Risk management strategies reducing risk related to the hedging error are also presented. A detailed numerical analysis is performed for a point-to-point EIA.

Description: This presentation from the Actuarial Research Conference of 2006 is an overview of Guaranteed Minimum Withdrawal Benefits. It briefly discusses pricing.

Description: This abstract describes a paper that analyzes the sample size effects on the estimation of the beta.

Description: We propose an age-shift model to modify the LC model and deal with the problem of parameters. The proposed method attains smaller estimation errors with respect to mean absolute percentage error or mean square error. We also apply the proposed age-shift model to the mortality rates of these four countries to evaluate the longevity risk in annuity products by measuring life expectancy.

Description: This discussion on annuities and settlement options focuses on: A. Revisions made recently in the interest and mortality bases for annuity contracts and retirement income policies and for settlement options embodied in life insurance policies. B. The extent to which the use of settlement options might be justified for payees other than the insured and beneficiaries who are natural persons. C. The practical problems arising in connection with: 1 Requests for elaborate or complicated settlements 2 Liberal settlement option guarantees in outstanding policies

Description: Life and annuity markets around the world have seen increasingly complex investment-combined products, including universal life, fixed indexed annuities, variable annuities with a wide variety of guaranteed benefits and indexed variable annuities. Insurance companies are facing unprecedented exposure to financial risks in addition to traditional mortality and longevity risks. The risk assessment and modeling for such complex designs by conventional methods often focus heavily on their market competitiveness and profitability. However, there seems to be a lack of quantifiable and systematic approaches to assess investment risks associated with investment combined products. The objective of the proposed work is to develop a framework for quantifying and analyzing various forms of contractual designs and showcase different techniques to assess the trade-off between competitive contractual designs and their practical implications regarding the difficulty of risk management.

Description: This paper considers a typical retirement endowment plan where an endowment provides for a monthly payment at retirement and units of life insurance prior to retirement and which the amounts of insurance in later years are net level premium reserves. From Transactions of Society of Actuaries 1961, Vol. 13, No. 37.

Description: Presented at May 1996 Spring Meeting. This session offers a retrospective and prospective look at the development of actuarial pricing models and technology tools.