Description: This article discusses the importance, measurement and improvement of product development efficiency.

Description: This article describes some of the traditional profit measurement standards for direct marketing and then presents a more comprehensive and up-to-date foundation for insurance direct marketers and actuaries to use when reviewing individual direct marketing campaigns or total marketing programs.

Description: This article poses the question, why doesn't the teaching of life contingencies start with the premise that the rate of investment income is a random process in a similar manner to the random nature of the time until death? The article suggests some methods for doing so.

Description: The Actuary Vol. 22 , No. 7. This articles explores the dangers posed by many guaranteed-return life insurance and annuity products.

Description: This is the second installment of an article about using microeconomics and the concepts of embedded value to better manage and understand the profitability of direct marketing programs.

Description: Summary of recent changes to IRS Section 7702 Interest Rates, and how it will impact the design of life insurance products in the future.

Description: The article discusses the continued popularity of indexed UL insurance and possible reasons why a company's actual indexed UL earnings may be below their original pricing expectations for the product. The article discusses several key items that may be the source of that underperformance (e.g., hedge ineffectiveness, policyholder behavior) and the need to monitor earnings and perform analyses to better understand those potential sources.

Description: This paper begins with an investigation of the conceptual profit model known as Anderson's formula, then it compares Anderson's formula with two alternative profit formulas and discusses some applications and limitations of each method. A discussion of the paper follows. From Transactions of Society of Actuaries 1979, Vol. 31.

Description: This article discusses the characteristics of companies dedicated to being leaders in the Term market and the role that reinsurers play.

Description: The Actuary Vol. 22, No. 2. This article discusses how the the choice of basis for measuring Interest Rate Spread impacts pricing and accounting for interest sensitive products.