Description: This paper discusses the proposed compulsory savings program combined with transparent investment vehicles designed to promote competition based on expense levels, fund performance and customer service. At retirement 50% of the account is annuitized in Participating Variable Annuity (PVA) backed by TIPS. All investment experience, expenses, and pooled longevity experience is passed to annuitants through periodic benefit adjustments. Annuities are priced uniformly based on age at commencement.

Description: The article considers how actuaries have responded to long term changes in the past and considers how to deal with two changes ion the future: pension provision when bond yields are low and long term care.

Description: This article provides background on managed target volatility funds and how they can be used for variable annuities and the mitigation of gap risk.

Description: This paper demonstrates that extreme value theory (EVT) can be used as a tool to model policyholder behavior in the extreme tail. This paper applies EVT to the study of variable annuity dynamic lapse behavior in the extreme tail. It illustrates a process whereby a company can fully model policyholder behavior, including the extreme tail, with existing data. No judgment about the extremal behavior is necessary.

Description: We analyze how volatility management techniques in VAs affected policyholders and insurance companies

Description: This presentation, session number 90PD, took place at the 1999 Spring Meeting of the Society of Actuaries, held May 24-25 in Atlanta. The last two years witnessed a proliferation of guarantees on variable annuities and competing investment products: guaranteed living benefits and death benefits on variable annuities, as well as mutual fund death benefits and Canadian segregated funds. “To estimate costs of these benefits, companies have moved away from stochastic modeling to capital market pricing approaches. A panel of experts identify the various risks associated with these guarantees, provide an overview of the different pricing methodologies used in determining the costs, discuss whether companies are charging enough for these risks, and forecast the next wave of guarantee designs.” From the Record of the Society of Actuaries, Vol. 25, No. 1.

Description: This paper focuses on the equity unit annuity popularly termed the variable annuity. Followed by several discussion papers submitted

Description: The article summarizes PLRs 201515001 and 201519001, in which the IRS addressed the treatment of a non-qualified deferred annuity contract under the investor control doctrine and other applicable rules. The contract provides a guaranteed lifetime withdrawal benefit and investment options that correspond to “public” mutual funds. The IRS concluded that the investor control doctrine will apply to treat the contract purchaser as the owner of the mutual fund shares for federal income tax purposes. The IRS also addressed certain other tax aspects of the arrangement. The effect of the rulings is that the contract will be taxed similarly to a contingent deferred annuity (where the policyholder holds the mutual fund shares in his or her own brokerage account), while being structured like a traditional deferred variable annuity (where the insurance company holds the shares in its separate account).

Description: This article describes how to model variable annuities using a GPU along with some of the stumbling blocks.