Description: Investment opportunities are driven by events in the economy and how participants in the financial markets react to those events. This keynote address will highlight current economic themes and their impact on investment opportunities.

Description: ETFs have seen explosive growth in the past decade. Due to its flexibility and embedded risk management features, insurance companies and pension funds, are showing increasing interest in this asset class. This session covers an introduction to ETFs and the risk/rewards for insurance companies and pension funds as an additional asset class.

Description: This session from the 2003 SOA Orlando Meeting provides an overview of how insurers, pension plans and other institutional investors measure and report manager performance, the benchmarks used and capital at risk CAR. From the Record of the Society of Actuaries, Volume 29, No. 3.

Description: Recent reports have expressed concern over historically high levels of corporate indebtedness, with an increasing share of investment-grade debt now in the BBB category, just above speculative-grade. This session will explore trends in the corporate debt market, with a focus on the risks and opportunities for portfolios in the current environment.

Description: This panel discussion session focuses on approaches to investing pension assets including real estate, foreign investment, gold, and allocation of assets to various investment categories. From Record of Society of Actuaries 1980, Vol. 6, No. 4.

Description: Interest rates steadily declining ever since the Volcker Fed tackled inflation in the early eighties. Ten years of stimulating monetary policy brought new lows. We should have braced ourselves for a return to neutrality, but that concept remains elusive. We will explore structural issues that have brought rates to these low levels and the potential impacts on the insurance business.

Description: Investment risk management has become a core competency of insurance companies, and much has been discussed on this topic. This session examines the current investment risk management practices such as product line specific hedging and macro hedging, with a focus on what still remains to be addressed—whether the tradeoff of addition risk management is worthwhile.

Description: The effects of climate change have been widely documented. Whether it’s rising temperatures, more frequent and violent storms or disruption to wild life, there is a consensus in the scientific community that these effects are real. What are the risks and opportunities that climate change brings to an investment portfolio? As society transitions to more sustainable sources of energy and tries to find more sustainable ways to consume, there will be winners and losers. In this presentation, speakers will discuss their process to identify winners in this changing world and highlight the risks to various industries.

Description: This teaching session presented at the April 1976 meeting in Washington D.C. provides a brief outline and a bibliography related to Portfolio Theory and Investment Policy.

Description: This presentation at the SOA 1990 Annual Meeting offers financial market perspectives on volatility, responses to volatility, new financial products, risk and performance.