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: "Visual storytelling is frequently used to effectively convey complex actuarial concepts to our clients and other audiences. When talking about data visualization, we often focus on the explanatory aspect. But data visualization is also a crucial tool in developing insights from large and complex data sets at every stage of data analytics spectrum: • descriptive (what happened?), • diagnostic (why it happened?), • predictive (what will happen?), • and prescriptive (how do I influence what will happen?). In exploratory and modeling stages of data analytics’ project, we let the data tell the story or explore our intuition and hypothesis through data pictures. We demonstrate the power of visual display in healthcare data analytics through vivid examples from the healthcare case studies. These illustrations of data visualization exploratory power range from assessing the quality of data or examining outliers, to exploring variables’ relationships and trends, to hypothesis testing, to guiding in feature selection and models’ comparison and evaluation, to model validation. Throughout these illustrations, we will discuss principles of graphical effectiveness, excellence and integrity."

Description: Presented at August 2011 46th Actuarial Research Conference. Compression methods improve model run time. This talk discusses compression features, trade-offs, validation, and recommended practice.

Description: Presented at May 2005 Spring Meeting. Panelists discuss strategies for increased modeling speed as risk management, valuation and product development activities have been requiring increasingly complex financial models.