Description: The article discusses the continued popularity of indexed UL insurance and possible reasons why a company's actual indexed UL earnings may be below their original pricing expectations for the product. The article discusses several key items that may be the source of that underperformance (e.g., hedge ineffectiveness, policyholder behavior) and the need to monitor earnings and perform analyses to better understand those potential sources.

Description: This article delves into the transformative realm of Business Intelligence (BI) tools. We explore the fundamental functionality and structure of these tools, and through case studies illustrate how they offer valuable insights into carrier experience and underwriting dynamics. From real-time data visualization to in-depth data analysis, discover the essential features that empower businesses to make better informed decisions.

Description: Future mortality improvement has been a common assumption in life insurance and annuity pricing and forecasting for many years. However, experience over the last decade suggests this might be an assumption that merits reconsideration in the United States. This article will take a closer look at factors that impact mortality improvement trends and discuss why insurers may want to reevaluate product designs to better manage the associated mortality risk. We then introduce a product idea with this in mind, where premiums are based on a life expectancy index and insurers share the risk (and opportunity) or mortality improvement with policyholders.

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

Description: Discusses insurance company considerations and approaches when dealing with the complexities of deferred lives within pension plans.

Description: This article discusses challenges in innovation, governance, and balancing the tension that naturally arises between them. Company culture is often a driver of success or failure in innovation. This article outlines a new dynamic to address this challenge.

Description: This article analyzes, understands, and discusses the impact of the upcoming Principle-Based Reserving (PBR) on non-variable deferred annuities.

Description: Constant Proportion Portfolio Insurance (CPPI) performance is assessed on realistic assumptions and dynamic strategies to mitigate the so-called ”gap risk”.

Description: Read the October 2018 issue of Product Matters published by the Product Development Section. Newsletters provide practical information for the working actuary, articles on trends that impact sections and news about section activities.

Description: Read the June 2018 issue of Product Matters published by the Product Development Section. Newsletters provide practical information for the working actuary, articles on trends that impact sections and news about section activities.

Description: Provide high level summary of predictive modelling.

Description: How Vitality's Shared Value insurance model aligns the incentives of policyholders with insurer to improve health and create and share actuarial surplus.

Description: Provide high level summary of changes to Valuation Rates for Payout Annuities and similar contracts.

Description: How do combo products fit in the new statutory valuation framework?

Description: Read the June 2017 issue of Product Matters published by the Product Development Section. Newsletters provide practical information for the working actuary, articles on trends that impact sections and news about section activities.

Description: This article covers the importance of a system peer review within the systems change control process and offers suggestions for creating more robust controls.

Description: Read the November 2016 issue of Product Matters! published by the Product Development Section. Newsletters provide practical information for the working actuary, articles on trends that impact sections and news about section activities.

Description: Read the July 2016 issue of Product Matters!

Description: On October 30, 2015, the SOA Assumption Development and Governance Group, an informal discussion group consisting of nearly 200 interested actuaries with topics pertaining to actuarial assumption development and governance, organized an industry discussion call on end-to-end assumption documentation practices. The purpose of this call was to generate a large list of ideas for best-practice assumption documentation. More than thirty companies were represented in the call, including direct insurers, reinsurers and consulting firms. This article is the work product of the discussion written by Laurie Li and Alex Zaidlin.

Description: The objective of this article is to help indexed annuity writers understand the pricing practices and ALM strategies used by their peers in the industry, especially in light of the prevailing low interest rate environment and a possible rise in interest rates.

Description: Six years after the global financial crisis, the reshaped contours of the market for the life insurance industry are coming into focus.

Description: February 2016 issue of Product Matters!

Description: A review of product and sales trends for variable, indexed and fixed annuities against the current backdrop of low interest rates and record equity market valuations

Description: A review of the development of multi-asset indices and their placement in fixed indexed annuities in the Unites States. This article covers the evolution of indexing and its impact on the annuity marketplace. It also summarizes the key factors underlying the proliferation of multi-asset indices with built-in volatility targets.

Description: Performance metrics are widely used by companies to create benchmarks, assess performance, and make strategic decisions. Traditional metrics, however, may not properly capture the risks embedded in complex or illiquid insurance liabilities, as recent global market volatility has revealed. As a result, executives are increasingly turning to risk-adjusted performance metrics (RAPMs) to enhance performance measurement. This article describes the shortcomings of traditional performance metrics and introduces some of the more commonly used RAPMs.

Description: Compares how other industries (in this case, Fast Food) researches and tests new products. Provides examples of how the insurance industry can efficiently research and test new product concepts before going to market.

Description: This article discusses the The Assumption Development and Governance Group (sponsored by the Financial Reporting and Product Development Sections).

Description: Universal Life/Indexed Universal Life trends based on the 6th annual Milliman survey of leading UL carriers. Reveals the current dynamics of the UL/IUL market and provides carriers with competitive benchmarking to see how they stand relative to their peers.

Description: This article discusses sessions from the product development section post symposium seminar on product development - beginning to end. Sessions included product specific topics like term, universal life with secondary guarantees, and indexed products. Panel discussions included inforce management and advanced modeling issues.

Description: Then and Now

Description: Overview of a recent visit to silicon valley and how the learnings from this trip can be applied in an insurance setting.

Description: This article focuses on these Key Points - The Situation: Mortality Improvement assumption is not a simple equation. What Could Happen: Any mortality improvement assumption is a bit of a ‘bet’ relative to the ongoing penetration of known developments and the introduction of new developments, such as the appearance of the AIDS epidemic. What Needs to Happen: Better understanding of Mortality Improvement assumption, final assumption, and best estimate approach.

Description: Target volatility, as an investment strategy, has been used by many funds not only as a way to smooth return but also as a way to manage risks of the VA guarantees. Contrary to existing research which favors volatility targeting over fixed allocation, this article shows that because of the existence of market jump risk, target volatility strategy does not necessarily offer an improved risk profile for VA writers. Further, target volatility coupled with leveraging can significantly increase tail risk for insurance companies.

Description: October 2012 issue of the Product Development Section newsletter, Product Matters!

Description: This article gives the highlights of the 88-page report including detailed assumptions for products including universal life with secondary guarantees (ULSG), cash accumulation universal life (CashAccum), current assumption universal life (CAUL), indexed universal life (IUL) and variable universal life (VUL). The 29 companies and 83 products represented in the report allow for an interesting perspective on premium persistency assumptions used in pricing, cash flow testing (CFT) and generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP)/international financial reporting standard (IFRS) functions. This article covers some general results and ULSG-specific results.

Description: Complete issue of Product Matters!, Issue 83, June 2012

Description: Feature article discussing how market interest rates and bond yields dropped in response to the global financial crisis in late 2008, and they have struggled to return to their prior levels, in part because the Federal Reserve has made efforts to spur growth and lending in a sluggish U.S. economy.

Description: This article reviews some of the highlights of th 2010 SOA Annual meeting including the impact on pricing resulting from Solvency II, Market Consistent Valuation of New Business - MCVNB, the latest on mortality, Standards of Practice in product development, managing risk in product design and a regulation update.

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: Discusses the results of the SOA’s 2009 UL secondary guarantee study conducted by the Policy Behavior in the Tail PBITT working group.

Description: Discusses Phase 1 survey results from the SOA/RGA post-level term research project.

Description: Discusses the interactions between dynamic lapses and interest rates in stochastic modeling for variable annuities.

Description: Feature article from the newsletter Product Matters discussing variable annuities and principle-based approaches to reserve and capital requirements.

Description: Shows why predictive modeling should be a necessary tool for the life actuary, identifies examples of various limitations in traditional mortality experience analyses, and also posits various predictive modeling techniques as a means of avoiding these constraints.

Description: New chairperson’s column discussing his goals for the Product Development Section.

Description: Discussion of the dangers of a product development process which places too much emphasis on the mathematical contribution of actuaries to the process.

Description: Column describing the events of a recent Product Development Symposium 2009.

Description: Chairman’s corner addressing the many recent external events which have impacted the level of trust in the insurance industry and how this affects product and marketing success for the industry.

Description: A discussion of the theory underlying risk neutral investment scenarios

Description: The last few years have seen a dramatic change in the way that insurance products are priced. If we traveled back in time 15 to 20 years, we would see a world where most insurance products were priced on the basis of a few static scenarios. In the last several years, pricing on a stochastic basis has become more mainstream—at least for contracts with embedded guarantees.

Description: Milliman, Inc. recently conducted a comprehensive survey of leading UL insurers to discover current dynamics of the UL market. The scope of the survey included UL with secondary guarantees ULSG, cash accumulation UL, current assumption UL, and indexed UL.

Description: Update on NAIC Activities

Description: This article discusses a variety of new developments in the annuity market.

Description: This article presents the author's views on how direct writers of term insurance should view and monitor their reinsurance.

Description: A discussion of the value a reinsurer can provide beyond assistance through coinsurance with XXX compliance. There are recent signs that the use of coinsurance and the inherent shift of the burden of the reserves to the reinsurers are putting stress on the reinsurers’ capacity limitations. Reinsurers are able to shoulder only so much of the burden of the reserve strain caused by Regulation XXX. What reinsurers do best, and know best, though, is mortality risk. If your company is seeing signs from your reinsurers that this is the case, this article will present some thoughts to consider as to why sales of level term products may still be acceptable, even without the support of coinsurance programs.

Description: Discussion of growth in popularity of UL products designed to focus on the guarantee of death benefit protection rather than cash value accumulation and some of the pricing and reserving issues with respect to those products

Description: Introduction to Private Placement VUL

Description: Full version of Product Matters! November 2002, Issue No. 54.

Description: The second part of a two-part Canadian Corner article on Segregated Fund Guarantees. Part I ran in the June 1998 issue of Product Development News.

Description: A discussion of where insurance companies and their products fit in the retirement asset market and trends over the past few decades. Some historical data on the insurance companies' share of retirement assets is included.

Description: This article briefly describes the guarantees available within the segregated Fund products sold in Canada along with the associated risks and cost factors.