Description: Presented at May 2005 Spring Meeting. Panelists discuss the process of setting long-term investment assumptions from a practical perspective, including changes in equity return premium, use of risk-neutral scenarios and methodology, and special considerations for setting pricing scenarios.

Description: 1993 SOA Annual Meeting, New York. Insurance regulators commissioned a task force to develop cash-flow variability measurement standards. This session presented the recommendations of that task force and the relationship to cash-flow testing. Topics included: 1. The regulatory need and how the process was approached. 2. The types of CMO variability that the standards attempt to address. 3. A description of the scenario selection process that's used in this model. 4. The prepayment assumptions and the method to be used to collect prepayment data. 5. The relationship to cash-flow testing. 6. The regulators' reactions.

Description: From a session at the annual meeting of the Society of Actuaries held in Chicago, Illinois, October 15-18, 2000 Discussion of purposes and approaches for creating interest-rate scenarios.

Description: 1998 SOA Spring Meeting, Maui. The panelists discussed the many factors involved with insurance company decisions on whether they are putting their money to work in a most prudent fashion. This session focused on the practical aspects of asset allocation.

Description: Presented at October 1996 Annual Meeting. This panel reviews asset valuation methods in use for retirement plans, pros and cons of each method, how to relate with actuarial assumption and solvency position, tracking with market value, and dealing with new asset categories.

Description: Presented at June 1996 Spring Meeting. Provides overview of modern pricing of assets such as derivatives. It includes theory and practical applications, particularly how they relate to insurance companies.

Description: Presented at May 1996 Spring Meeting. Panelists provide guidance and suggestions in modeling certain forms of an insurance company's assets, including equity and equity-linked notes, non-dollar investments, real estate, commercial mortgages, and asset pools.

Description: Panelists discuss the process and challenges presented by mergers or acquisitions. From the Record of the Society of Actuaries, Vol. 24, No. 2.

Description: Presented at May 1996 Spring Meeting. The investment environment has undergone significant change over the last several years through the introduction of many sophisticated investment vehicles. This session provides an update on current challenges encountered by life insurance companies in accounting for this new array of investments. Among the issues covered will be accounting for derivatives, mortgage-backed securities, and other hedging vehicles. The session also includes some of the system and projection modeling challenges encountered as a by-product of investment in these vehicles.