Description: Life and annuity markets around the world have seen increasingly complex investment-combined products, including universal life, fixed indexed annuities, variable annuities with a wide variety of guaranteed benefits, indexed variable annuities, etc. Insurance companies are facing unprecedented exposure to financial risks in addition to traditional mortality and longevity risks. The risk assessment and modeling for such complex designs by conventional methods often focus heavily on their market competitiveness and profitability. However, there seems to be a lack of quantifiable and systematic approach to assess investment risks associated with investment combined products. The objective of the proposed work is to develop a framework for quantifying and analyzing various forms of contractual designs and showcase different techniques to assess the trade-off between competitive contractual designs and their practical implications with regard to the difficulty of risk management.

Description: The article analyzes Private Letter Ruling 202031008, which considers how Internal Revenue Code sections 72(q) and (u) apply to an annuity contract issued to a trust. In particular, the Ruling interprets the terms “taxpayer,” “holder” and “held by” in those Code sections in situations where a non-qualified deferred annuity contract is issued to a grantor trust or a non-grantor trust. The Ruling’s analysis and conclusions differ in some respects depending on which of these types of trusts is involved. In addition, although the Ruling does not address sections 72(s) or 72(e)(4)(C), the Ruling has potential implications under those provisions because they also use the term “holder” and “holds,” respectively.

Description: An overview of the evolution of equity-based guarantees (e.g. VA, FIA, etc.) over the last few years and discussion the current lay of the land as it relates to the regulatory, issues, capital markets environment in which these products are offered.

Description: An overview of guaranteed lifetime withdrawal benefits (GLWB) on registered index-linkedannuity (RILA) products and a stochastic analysis of market risks.

Description: An exploration of drivers, cohorts and dynamics for policyholder behavior for VA and FIA based on industry experience data, including changes in recent years and the emergence of long-term data in key areas. We will also discuss critical elements to developing a sustainable and coherent framework to translate this complex experience data into assumption models.

Description: How to set asset assumption, at the cycle or through the cycle and other considerations