Description: FASB's Statement of Financial Accounting Standards No. 97 contains wide-sweeping changes to the preparation of GAAP financials for insurance companies. The focus of this article will be on the ramifications of the interest rate FASB has decided to use to amortize deferred acquisition costs.

Description: This article is aimed to cover the following: 1) Provides an assessment of income volatility under Long Duration Targeted Improvements (LDTI) for several key types of long duration contracts along with select illustrations, and compares against those under current GAAP, 2) Discuss areas where accounting policies or methodologies can influence income volatility, and 3) Show how a company's management reporting can be adapted to help explain income variances under LDTI.

Description: This article describes that some companies are ‘approaching the problem of how to accommodate Universal Life in GAAP statements by using a simple method which produces not unreasonable results and waiting for consensus on appropriate methodology to develop. This describes so of the methodology currently in use.