Description: Actuaries can leverage cluster modeling to reduce model runtime and cloud compute costs, which can be a real concern as companies transition from an on-premise grid to a scalable cloud solution. We consider practical considerations associated with clustering, through both US statutory and US GAAP lenses. Lastly, the results from a variable annuity liability clustering case study are presented.

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

Description: In the United States, there has been much industry discussion of the challenges associated with a sustained low interest rate environment, which impacts both the asset and liability sides of the balance sheet in unfavorable ways. The intent of this article is not to focus on these strategic issues. Rather, we attempt to shine a spotlight on some of the modeling challenges that practicing actuaries may experience when incorporating negative interest rates into their models.

Description: This article is the final installment of our three-part series on economic scenario generators (“ESGs”). Part I and II were published in the November 2019 and August 2020 issues of The Modeling Platform. Part III contextualizes the framework for selecting, building, and validating ESGs and focuses on the Academy Interest Rate Generator (“AIRG”), the most commonly used real-world ESG for US actuaries

Description: With many complex regulatory changes on the horizon as well as pressures to ensure model accuracy from auditors, regulatory requirements and new actuarial standards of practice, the importance of robust model validation is coming to the forefront of actuaries’ minds. What was previously a day-two task for many companies is becoming just as important as model development! In this session, you will hear from those that have been deeply involved in building model validation frameworks and tools in responses to regulatory changes GAAP Long Duration Targeted Improvements (“LDTI”) and Principles Based Reserves (“PBR”).

Description: The optional phase-in period for life principle-based reserves (PBR) has come to a close, and companies have put in the work to bring their PBR implementations across the finish line. With the mandatory PBR implementation deadline behind them, companies can turn their attention from compliance to model and process improvements. The presenters will outline lessons learned from PBR implementations and their applications to broader use cases, as well as resources that are available for PBR modelers. Discussion topics will include items such as: Model simplifications and validation Model run-time techniques Model scalability (e.g. adding new products / future assumption updates) Sensitivity testing Model projections Available PBR & other modeling resources (e.g. PBR practice note, ASOP 56)

Description: This article will be focused on maximizing the reuse of code using features available within Moody’s Axis specifically targeted at using Formula Link.

Description: Read the April 2020 issue of The Modeling Platform, published by the Modeling Section. Newsletters provide practical information for the working actuary, articles on trends that impact sections and news about section activities.

Description: The session offers high-level initial steps to get started using R, as well as a list of helpful resources for both general data science and actuarial science with R. Attendees will learn about popular R packages to perform practical tasks such as importing, transforming and visualizing data, as well as packages commonly used by actuaries. You will also be introduced to the markdown package for creating reproducible and reusable analyses and workflows. By the end of the session, you will be familiar enough with using R and RStudio to begin incorporating these tools in your day-to-day work as an actuary

Description: Python is the leading programming language for data science. Python programming is one skill that actuaries should acquire. It facilitates analytic work, and the available visualization tools help to communicate ideas. In this article, I use a traditional actuarial problem, mortality modeling, as an example.

Description: Read the November 2019 issue of The Modeling Platform, published by the Modeling Section. Newsletters provide practical information for the working actuary, articles on trends that impact sections and news about section activities.

Description: This article is the first installment of a three-part series that aims to provide an overview of ESGs and will focus on the general motivation for stochastic modeling, its advantages and its limitations. Future articles will further break down the key factors of ESGs and the application of these factors to better understand the Academy Interest Rate Generator (AIRG).

Description: This article lays conceptual foundations associated with projecting investment-related discretionary elements of various life insurance and annuity products. It outlines potential implementation approaches that may be appropriate when calculations are performed in a risk-neutral setting. The article concludes that crediting rates in risk-neutral models can be projected as in real-world models, except that the modeled provision for expected credit losses should be modified to equal real-world expected losses initially, but over the projection reflect management’s evolving expectation, moving ultimately to risk neutral expected losses.

Description: This article discusses important implications of the upcoming Long-Duration Targeted Improvements (LDTI) accounting change for the modeling actuary. We discuss the modeling implications of new GAAP standards for Market Risk Benefit (MRB), including identification of MRBs, implementation of fair valuation in actuarial systems and retroactive determination of at-issue valuation inputs for transition. We also examine the modeling implications of the other aspects of the accounting change, including Liability for Future Policy Benefit (LFPB), Deferred Acquisition Cost (DAC), and other transition and disclosure requirements

Description: Summary of the modeling-related sessions from some of the major 2018 Society of Actuaries (SOA) meetings: Life & Annuity Symposium, Health Meeting and the Valuation Actuary Symposium.

Description: This research report is a summary of an online survey and follow-up discussions with survey respondents on the current state of actuarial modeling controls within U. S. and Canadian life insurance and annuity companies. The current state was then compared to the results from the 2012 survey on this topic to examine the evolution in actuarial model controls and governance. The report also provides an industry assessment and proposes considerations for enhancing the current state towards a well-controlled governance framework.

Description: This presentation discusses a process for determining the minimum reinsurance retention level consistent with defined parameters. The conclusions reached were: 1. Under PDS dependence, optimal reinsurance strategy is multivariate stop loss form. 2. Explicit solutions could be derived in certain bivariate model. 3. Binding and unbinding constraints are equivalent. From Actuarial Research Clearing House, 2012, Vol. 1.

Description: Actuarial models have always been an important tool for helping companies project future results and understand risks. As complex models have started to become critical components of the reporting and compliance processes, however, models have vaulted to new levels of importance—and of scrutiny. This has raised everyone’s interest in the management of models, and by implication, in their ability to control the inherent model risk. From Small Talk Newsletter, Issue 37, January 2012.

Description: The attached report presents the results of a survey conducted by the Society of Actuaries Mortality and Underwriting Survey Committee in July of 2008 under the following categories: 1. Modeling Mortality Risk. 2. Use of Reinsurance to Manage Mortality. 3. Retention / Large Case Management. 4. Catastrophe Reinsurance. 5. Mortality Concentration of Risk. 6. Catastrophic Bonds.

Description: This article provides an overview of the commonly used structural credit risk modeling approach that is less familiar to the actuarial community.

Description: This paper focuses on business risks rather than market, credit and operational risks. The author proposes a bottom-up approach for modelling and measuring business risk where the dynamic of the underlying earnings is described in a continuous-time model.

Description: Automobile insurers classify the risks that they underwrite in order to subdivide the portfolio into classes of risks with similar profiles. While some insurers may have sufficient historical data, several others may not have significant volume of experience data in order to produce reliable claims predictions to help enhance their risk classification systems. A database containing a pooled experience of several insurers thereby helps to produce a more fair, reliable, and equitable premium structure for all risks concerned. This paper uses multilevel models to analyze the data on claim counts provided by the General Insurance Association of Singapore, an organization consisting of most of the general insurers in Singapore. The multilevel nature of the data is due to the following: a certain vehicle is observed over a period of years and is insured by a particular insurance company under a certain 'fleet' policy. The authors show how intercompany data lead to a priori premiums and a posteriori corrections to these initial premiums. Specific focus is made in understanding the intercompany effects using various count distribution models [Poisson, negative binomial, zero–inflated and hurdle Poisson]. The performance of these various models is compared the authors also investigate how to use the historical claims of a company, fleet and/or vehicle in order to correct for the premium initially set.

Description: U.K. life insurers writing participating business are required by the Financial Services Authority to value their assets and liabilities on a market-consistent basis. The purpose of this paper is to: • Explain the valuation approach based on market-consistent values and its rationale. • Set out the issues faced by life insurers in implementing the regime. • Explain how insurers addressed these issues. • Explain the importance of the modeling techniques they used.

Description: Discusses the growing and evolving field of pricing and valuing stock option plans, and makes the case that actuaries are the professionals best qualified to serve clients in the field.

Description: This session from the 2005 SOA New Orleans Meeting discusses issues and concerns related to asset-liability ALM modeling. From the Record of the Society of Actuaries, Vol. 31, No. 1.

Description: At this session 7OF of the 2004 Valuation Actuary Symposium panelists discuss the conceptual and practical issues of modeling to reflect developing areas, including fair-value and embedded-value measurement, embedded guarantees and stochastically determined capital requirements.

Description: This session 5TS of the 2004 Valuation Actuary Symposium covers the need to model assets in insurance companies has gone well beyond compliance with cash-flow testing requirements. Robust asset modeling techniques are needed in order to quantify risk exposures appropriately and to comply with a widening array of liability valuation and capital adequacy calculations that rely on stochastically modeling the interaction of liabilities and the assets that support them.

Description: This session at the 2003 Valuation Actuary Symposium discusses advanced modeling techniques. Focus is on advanced liability and asset modeling issues, model distinctions between types of variable annuity guarantees, stochastic mortality, stochastic-on-stochastic modeling, and alternatives to stochastic modeling.

Description: 2003 Valuation Actuary Symposium, San Diego, CA. This session addressed the emerging practice where management is developing new ways to examine financial risks holistically in an integrated model.

Description: Announcement of an upcoming 2003 Stochastic Modeling Symposium.

Description: 2002 Valuation Actuary Symposium, Lake Buena Vista, FL. In this teaching session the instructor explained how to scrutinize model results and use models to make strategic decisions. Specific topics included validation of asset models, modeling considerations for derivatives and assets with embedded options, using models to assist with portfolio management, and using models to improve portfolio yields and realized product spreads.

Description: In this paper, we propose measures of the risk that the value of the liabilities becomes larger than the value of the assets, and this especially for insurance companies. We study probabilities of mismatching and a degree of mismatching in unsegmented and multidimensional models of the balance, in which we stress the influence of interest rates on the active and passive side of the balance.

Description: A presentation on the principle of equivalent utility from the 2001 ARCH. Contains both the static and dynamic model as well as examples with exponential utility.

Description: In this paper we compute the conditional and unconditional probability of ruin for an individual who wishes to consume a fixed periodic amount from an initial endowment invested in a portfolio earning a stochastic rate of return. From Retirement Needs Framework, M-RS00-1.

Description: 1999 SOA Annual Meeting, San Francisco. This panel expanded on earlier research to examine the potential costs of long-term guarantees, transfer risk modeling techniques, and the formulation of practical strategies to manage investment accumulation products.

Description: This paper reviews validation for the model of a life insurance company's liabilities with actual company data. Two methods are reviewed: static and dynamic validation. From Society of Actuaries Financial Reporting Monograph, M-AS99-1.

Description: This paper shows that the Esscher transform is also an efficient technique for valuing derivative securities if the logarithms of the prices of the primitive securities are governed by certain stochastic processes with stationary and independent increments. Two applications are presented, the first for valuing a European call option and the second for pricing derivative securities of multiple risky assets.

Description: This session at the 1998 Valuation Actuary Symposium discusses issues related to variable and fixed deferred annuity modeling.

Description: This session at the 1998 Valuation Actuary Symposium discusses the modeling of equity-indexed annuities including the assets and derivatives associated with the annuities.

Description: Panelists at this session at the SOA 1998 Maui I Spring Meeting present methods and models for determining policyholder behavior with respect to lapses and interest rates in order to value liabilities and embedded options in life and annuity products.

Description: 1998 Valuation Actuary Symposium. The panelists addressed the practical implications of how to use value-at-risk in a real-life setting, risk-based surplus, and an update of the C-3 component of RBC. This session is a mix between the regulatory situation and quantitative analysis.

Description: This is the abstract of a paper about developing a model that will provide insight into the true inherent value of a property-liability insurance company from a market perspective.

Description: This session at the 1997 Valuation Actuary Symposium focuses on modeling issues for variable annuities from both a statutory and GAAP standpoint. Valuation actuary issues with respect to variable annuity modeling is also discussed.

Description: 1997 Valuation Actuary Symposium, Session 3 looks at considerations in strengthening reserves as a result of cash flow testing results.

Description: This 1997 Valuation Actuary Symposium, Session 15 focuses on life modeling.

Description: 1997 Valuation Actuary Symposium, Session 21 looks at advanced topics in annuity modeling.

Description: This paper suggests ways of presenting ideas from the theory of compound interest and actuarial mathematics using simulation on spreadsheets. From the Actuarial Research Clearing House 1997 Vol. 1.

Description: Presented at October 1996 Annual Meeting. Discusses the latest additions to the Handbook, recent developments/requirements in Canada, and current research to support the Dynamic Financial Condition Analysis Handbook.

Description: 1996 Valuation Actuary Symposium Proceedings, Session 11, discusses health financial projections and projection modeling in general.

Description: 1996 Valuation Actuary Symposium. In this teaching session on liability modeling, the panelists discussed the key aspects of identifying and gathering the data required to construct models, the model building process including objectives and considerations, and the modeling process from the standpoint of policyholder and company behaviors.

Description: 1996 Valuation Actuary Symposium. The purpose of this session is to enhance understanding of what it means to have an adequate reserve based on cash-flow testing by taking the audience into the world of interest rate models and interest rate model generators.

Description: 1996 Valuation Actuary Symposium. In this practitioners' forum the participants discussed interest rate scenarios that are used in cash-flow testing, what projection results you look at to determine whether you have a good result or a bad result, the concept of just what is reserve adequacy, and what does it mean to say that reserves are adequate.

Description: This paper explores the flexibility of kernel estimation as a means of nonparametric graduation and relates it to moving-weighted-average graduation. From Transactions of Society of Actuaries 1995, Vol. 47.

Description: This paper reviews the applications of operations research methods in the insurance industry. From Transactions of Society of Actuaries 1995, Vol. 47.

Description: Presented at September 1995 Valuation Actuary Symposium. This sessions talks about financial projections as a management tool and tough issues which may have to be addresses in making such projections.

Description: 1995 Valuation Actuary Symposium. In this session panelists discussed how cash-flow testing models can be used to provide significant Asset/Liability Management information, making the transition from cash-flow testing to ALM, definitions of ALM, the key assumptions in ALM, and evaluating results.

Description: 1994 SOA Spring Meeting, Orlando. This session is a discussion and examination of cash-flow testing models, including those developed by the British Working Party, Finnish Working Party, and others.

Description: This paper analyzes the U. S. Treasury monthly interest rates from 1953 to 1992, and the daily rates from 1981 to 1992 for various forms of chaotic behavior. The primary analysis was in determining the Burst Exponent by the use of Rescaled Range Analysis. This paper also discusses other possible uses of Fractional Brownian Motion in Finance Theory, Macroeconomics, and Actuarial Science. From Actuarial Research Clearing House 1994 VOL. 1.

Description: This is the abstract for the paper entitled 'Pricing Long Term Insurance Contracts.' This paper considers several models describing the changes in the needs of the insured for care over time. From Actuarial Research Clearing House 1994, VOL. 1.

Description: Easy access computing power is harnessed to approximate ruin probabilities. The dynamics of the traditional insurance model are stated in the form of period to period constraints. This allows the development of a life-table with the survival probabilities for a given set of parameters. Given the spreadsheet approach of the model, sensitivity analysis to study the impact of different parameter values and loss variable distributions can be easily implemented.

Description: 1993 SOA Annual Meeting, New York. This session was about what constitutes a good predictor for modeling. Topics included: 1. Size of model. 2. Lines of business. 3. Purpose. 4. Kinds of models. 5. Accuracy of model versus assumptions. 6. Presentation of results. 7. How to get credibility.

Description: This paper gives a brief review of advanced time series models, the state space model, using Monte Carlo techniques and subsequently illustrates their usefulness to practicing actuaries. The models employed allow for the possibilities of nonnormal errors and nonlinear functionals in the state equation, the observational equation or both. The approach is illustrated with several examples and data compiled by the National Center for Health Statistics.

Description: This paper presents a unifying non-Bayesian statistical method for incorporating prior information into the determination of probability distributions and other finite measures and develops the statistical properties of this method together with actuarial applications. A discussion of the paper follows. From Transactions of Society of Actuaries 1991, Vol. 43.

Description: This paper examines four and-a-half years of prescription records for an elderly population who have relatively comprehensive out-of-hospital drug coverage under the Pharmaceutical Assistance Contract for the Elderly program in Pennsylvania. The result is a discussion of the determination of non-parametric estimations of the distributions. From Actuarial Research Clearing House 1991, Vol 1.

Description: Option bounds are obtained in a discrete-time framework with transaction costs. The model represents an extension of the Cox-Ross-Rubinstein binomial option pricing model to cover the case of proportional transaction costs. The method proceeds by constructing the appropriate replicating portfolio at each trading interval. From Actuarial Research Clearing House 1991, VOL. 1.

Description: This paper develops a theory for the valuation of some kinds of interest sensitive cash flows. A process is derived which takes as input, assumptions about the capital markets and policy holder behaviour, and produces as output interest and decrement assumptions which can be used for conventional actuarial discounting. The methodology is illustrated using some idealized, but tractable, models of conventional non-par whole life insurance. The method is also applied to a simple Universal Life plan. The paper concludes by considering some of the problems encountered when applying the ideas to more practical problems.

Description: This session discussion is about application of actuarial analysis and models to evaluate investment features. From Record of the Society of Actuaries Vol. 15, No. 1.

Description: 1987 Valuation Actuary Symposium. This session discussed the implementation of a solvency testing process, associated company considerations, and the ways in which the process might be viewed by other parties.

Description: Presented at October 1985 Annual Meeting. This session focused on three projects funded by the Actuarial Education and Research Fund: risk models, operations research applications for actuaries and probability modeling of losses.

Description: This session from the 1984 SOA Toronto Meeting discusses a nontechnical introduction to Applied Statistics and Operations Research, practical applications and examples for financial reporting and asset management and an overview of the potential use in actuarial applications of these management tools. From Record of the Society of Actuaries Vol. 10, No. 4B

Description: In this paper an algorithm is derived for computing the distribution of aggregate claims for the individual risk theory model. From Transactions of Society of Actuaries 1983, Vol. 35.

Description: In this discussion, the panel recalls all of the considerations in the design of the SOFASIM Society OF Actuaries SIMulator. It was obvious from the first model of the life insurance company SOFASIM, as it was named must have an actuarial side as well as an investment side. GAAP and tax aspects of the model are also discussed.

Description: This is a discussion about computer models and simulation tools for life insurance companies. From Transactions of Society of Actuaries 1969, Vol. 21, No. 59AB

Description: In this article the author presents a general solution to the problem of finding the effective annual interest rate commonly arising in finance for an installment loan.