Description: Pandemic impact on continuing education. Financial Reporting Section and Community Engagement. US GAAP textbook update for LDTI. IFRI textbook update for amendments.

Description: With coinsurance of an existing block of long-duration insurance contracts, there may be existing reinsurance that remains in force. The new coinsurance is typically net of such “inuring reinsurance.” In this article, we look at approaches that the new reinsurer might apply to account for the effects of inuring reinsurance.

Description: As a follow-up to a previous five-part series on accounting for ceded reinsurance under LDTI, this article focuses on one issue that has, until now, been left without a general solution—how to measure the reinsured portion of a direct loss from capping a net premium ratio or flooring a liability. After acknowledging limited guidance on the issue, the article describes the various events that can lead to a loss, how reinsurance protects against loss, and how that is translated into formulas for measuring the reinsured portion of a loss.

Description: This article demonstrates that the alternative method of adjusting DAC amortization for actual experience fails to serve its purpose if amortization is based on amounts in force at the end of a reporting period. In that situation, the method would increase the amortization rate for excess terminations. Applying that increased rate to a lower basis, however, does not reliably reduce the unamortized DAC balance as required.

Description: Importance of non-GAAP operating earnings

Description: Accounting Standards Update No. 2018-12, Financial Services – Insurance (Topic 944): Targeted Improvements to the Accounting for Long-Duration Contracts (LDTI) has been effective for most large, public business entities since 2023 and will be effective for other insurers in 2025. While the guidance clarifies the need for incorporating claim liabilities and premium accrual balances in the liability for future policy benefits (LFPB) under LDTI, companies may still have questions given there are limited details available around the techniques used in practice. In this article, we demonstrate the need for incorporating claim liabilities and premium accrual balances in the LFPB under LDTI. We also look at two potential approaches of incorporating these accrual balances.

Description: This article discusses key considerations and differences in measurement requirements between IFRS 17 and LDTI, leveraging a term insurance example to illustrate potential impacts on liabilities and, ultimately, earnings emergence.

Description: This article highlights the fact that new requirements for disclosure of average liability duration and interest rates could lead to diversity in practice. It also recognizes that elements of the new disclosure requirements will enable financial statement users to perform their own crude estimates of these averages in ways that could help them to better understand the liabilities and to compare companies using consistent methods. Finally, the article describes how companies might also find value in such crude estimates.

Description: GAAP's elimination of gross profit as a basis for amortization of deferred acquisition costs enables the accounting for reinsurance of universal life contracts to better reflect the economic protection provided by reinsurance. It also makes it easier to assess the effectiveness of different techniques. Building on the analysis of an earlier article, "A Fresh Look at Accounting for Reinsurance of Universal Life," this article presents a practical approach to estimating the ineffectiveness of several existing techniques at accounting for the economic protection provided by reinsurance. The article ends with a summary of what a company might do to improve the effectiveness of its reinsurance accounting.

Description: The introduction and effective application of US GAAP LDTI have increased the scrutiny of those reviewing the updated financial results. That is because LDTI has resulted in significant changes in actuarial reserving and deferred acquisition cost (DAC) models for long-duration contracts, including significant changes to data, assumptions and required disclosures. In light of the changes, greater reliance has been put on companies’ model risk management (MRM) teams and model validations to assess the conceptual soundness and accuracy of their companies’ actuarial models and to assess that the underlying data and process utilized are suitable and appropriate. This article covers a brief background on model validation, walk through a sample LDTI-focused model validation framework/test plan, then provide insights on common LDTI-related validation observations based on the authors' prior validation experience.