Description: 1999 SOA Spring Meeting, Atlanta. This session addressed the risks and potential costs of long-term guarantees in some insurance products. Topics included: · Guaranteed annuity purchase rates - how close are current rates to the guarantees? · Guaranteed minimum credited rates. · Guaranteed bonus rates.

Description: Many of the innovations and methods required to improve retirement security exist, but have not been pulled together into an integrated solution at scale.

Description: This article addresses the issues of short-term volatility, the non-equivalency of traders and, how product development is being impacted by market consistency.

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

Description: This paper will describe why self-insurance is less attractive with transparent-accounting rules, and the will examine two strategies an employer can execute to reduce the plan's and the plan participant's risks.

Description: The article summarizes PLRs 201515001 and 201519001, in which the IRS addressed the treatment of a non-qualified deferred annuity contract under the investor control doctrine and other applicable rules. The contract provides a guaranteed lifetime withdrawal benefit and investment options that correspond to “public” mutual funds. The IRS concluded that the investor control doctrine will apply to treat the contract purchaser as the owner of the mutual fund shares for federal income tax purposes. The IRS also addressed certain other tax aspects of the arrangement. The effect of the rulings is that the contract will be taxed similarly to a contingent deferred annuity (where the policyholder holds the mutual fund shares in his or her own brokerage account), while being structured like a traditional deferred variable annuity (where the insurance company holds the shares in its separate account).

Description: Letter to the editor from a reader regarding a previous article titled, “Is This Correction Good For Life Insurance,” with a response from the author of the article.

Description: Panel discussion about how the Investment Year Method is used with life insurance and annuity products to determine the credited rate, and how market entry has affected investment policy. From the 1979 Record of Society of Actuaries, Vol. 5, No. 1.

Description: New Zealand is about to launch its first variable annuity with guaranteed lifetime withdrawal benefits. The product design is mindful of the lessons from the financial crisis in the United States, Europe and Japan.

Description: Article Nathaniel Ingersoll Bowditch by Bartlett in The Actuary, June 1979, Volume 13, Number 6