Description: In the absence of a generally accepted guide to actuarial principles and practices for pension plans, a new professional firm offering actuarial consulting services has both the freedom to establish and the burden of establishing the professional policies by which it will be guided. Our thinking about the practical and professional necessity of annual valuations is reflected in this paper. From Transactions of Society of Actuaries 1972, Vol. 24, Pt. 1, No. 69 AB.

Description: This article discusses communication skills and some pointers for actuaries looking to refine the way that they communicate model results.

Description: Software vendors participating in the A Comparative Analysis of Claims–Based Tools for Health Risk Assessment study were invited to submit comments on the study. In this document, MEDai comments on their contribution to the study's source data, and their results.

Description: This session from the 1993 Valuation Actuary Symposium discusses the draft of the group LTD practice notes, the disabled lives reserve DLR, the IBNR liability, the testing of a company performed at year-end 1992 to determine reserve adequacy and an overview of of the individual disability income IDI practice notes.

Description: In this paper we will describe how richer actuarial programs can be provided if a number of schools with smaller programs combine resources by forming a regional cooperative or consortium. We have already formed our own consortium, the Southwest Actuarial Education and Research Consortium SWAERC. The strategies proposed here have already been used in SWAERC, and we will illustrate each of them by describing our own experience with it.

Description: The next evolution of actuarial systems in the U.S. will likely be a move toward a single system solution. This article defines a single system solution and illustrates how models can be shared across actuarial functions, the potential benefits of a single system solution, and describes potential mitigation strategies to address typical actuarial concerns.

Description: The April/May 2016 edition of The Actuary magazine—the Society of Actuaries’ flagship publication.

Description: This study examines the relationship between the administrator of a pension plan [the principal] and the actuary [the agent]. The objective is to design a contract for both the plan administrator and the actuary so that the actuary provides the appropriate level of information to the plan administrator. The study uses a simple model- one principal [the pension fund administrator] and one agent [the actuary] in a one-period model. In standard principal-agent models, working harder means higher productive output. In this model, it means more accurate information. From Actuarial Research Clearing House 1999 Vol. 1.