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: While our ability to access and analyze large quantities of data is better than ever, many long-term products suffer from sparse data in critical risk areas, such as deep in-the-money lapse experience and long-term utilization rates for income guarantees. The presenters will explore industry-level annuity experience data for these types of situations, and discuss quantitative approaches to addressing them in pricing and other applications.

Description: The hybrid Life/LTC and Life / Chronic Illness market is an exciting market that is in its relative infancy. There are many new companies that have just entered, or are considering entering, the hybrid market. Hybrid sales have grown tremendously over the past decade and are still going strong, with annual premium revenue estimated to be above $4 billion per year. The young issue ages for these products, relative to when LTC benefits are paid, means that the claim experience in the industry for these products is still very limited. Additionally, there are many moving parts to these products that present correlated risks and assumptions. The new entrants to the market, limited experience, and the interactions of risks create an environment equipped for vibrant discussions on the product structure, risks, assumptions, and considerations for modeling these hybrid products. The presenters would provide insight into each of these topics through a conceptual discussion, supported by observational data from case study projections and sensitivities.

Description: Institutional investors such as pension plans and insurance companies have enjoyed strong equity returns for a length of time with few historical precedents. Nearly a decade after the end of the financial crisis, strategies to provide downside protection remain expensive and the performance of traditional risk-managed funds has disappointed investors.

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: The management of the investments of an insurance enterprise has undergone a considerable evolution since the pioneering work of Redington in the mid 20th century. Best practices have evolved to incorporate ever more complex insurance liabilities, expanding investment asset classes and global market opportunities. Strategic asset allocation (SAA), liability driven investing, and other robust optimization approaches form the core of the professional management of insurance company investments.

Description: The presenters will highlight differences in mortality that result from socioeconomic issues. Topics will include the differences in cause-specific mortality among different socioeconomic classes, trends in these gaps over time, and recommendations for reducing inequalities in life expectancy in the future.

Description: Predictive modeling continues to gain traction in the life insurance industry with the rapid growth of available data and maturity of open source tools. New methods and technology in predictive analytics have enabled the evaluation of extremely large data more quickly and allow us to incorporate features previously not considered. The presenters will provide background on predictive modeling tools and algorithms utilized by actuaries and data scientists for life insurance, highlighting applications from marketing to underwriting.

Description: This third session in the Munich Re series continues with an exploration of responses to the changing workplace landscape from those inside the industry. The presenters will focus on practical approaches to identifying new opportunities, and on ways in which traditional products and sales channels are changing to meet emerging needs. Are voluntary benefits still relevant? Yes, but they are changing. While the first session provided an overview of the future workplace, this session will provide an overview of the current and evolving voluntary benefits market. Sales processes and products will be challenged to change to keep up with the new workplace dynamic. The presenters share strategies for developing products and sales channels that are robust and flexible enough to address evolving customer needs.

Description: Legislative changes and the economic environment have created a need for plan sponsors to understand and manage pension risk and volatility. Dynamic asset allocation glidepaths reduce risk as plans become better funded. But what about the risk that plan sponsors face when their plans are underfunded? The presenters will discuss the challenges of managing pension risk when assets don't keep pace with liabilities.

Description: Representing a large indexed annuity writer, the speakers will discuss the growth and evolution of the market for index annuity products. Moreover, the challenges that growth has introduced and how those challenges are being met. While much of the market consists of simple, accumulation-oriented S&P 500 based strategies with 0% return floors, a significant portion of industry sales come from more complex products with highly customized index strategies and other features, such as living benefit guarantees. Attendees will gain a broad understanding of the indexed annuity market, product and features, operational difficulties in risk management arising from product design, and how actuarial and hedge professionals are managing these issues.

Description: The NAIC has adopted revised VM-21 and AG43 for variable annuities, effective Jan. 1, 2020. The panel of presenters will provide background and an overview of the revisions, discuss detailed aspects of the new CTE Amount Standard Projection and prescribed assumptions, as well as discuss implementation considerations and the implications to hedging. In addition, the panelists will share progress on VM-23, principle-based reserves for non-variable annuities.

Description: Representing a large indexed annuity writer, the speakers will discuss the growth and evolution of the market for index annuity products. Moreover, the challenges that growth has introduced and how those challenges are being met. While much of the market consists of simple, accumulation-oriented S&P 500 based strategies with 0% return floors, a significant portion of industry sales come from more complex products with highly customized index strategies and other features, such as living benefit guarantees. Attendees will gain a broad understanding of the indexed annuity market, product and features, operational difficulties in risk management arising from product design, and how actuarial and hedge professionals are managing these issues.

Description: In this session, a company will share its experience on managing risks underlying the equity-linked insurance guarantees and what lessons were learned over these years as it adapted its strategies to suit the current market environment.

Description: An exploration of drivers, cohorts and dynamics for policyholder behavior for VA and FIA based on industry experience data, including changes in recent years and the emergence of long-term data in key areas. We will also discuss critical elements to developing a sustainable and coherent framework to translate this complex experience data into assumption models.

Description: The speakers will discuss the replication of long-term options, including a discussion of issues such as liquidity, transaction costs, slippage, impact of policyholder behavior, and machine learning algorithms to improve hedge effectiveness.

Description: The speaker will discuss the training of neural networks to compute future Greeks of liabilities (or options) without the use of nested stochastics.

Description: The proposed revisions to the variable annuity statutory framework and the FASB targeted improvement for long duration contract, motivate life insurance companies to re-evaluate their hedging strategy. Recently proposed revisions of AG 43/VM-21 and C3 Phase II, reward companies that have a clearly defined hedging strategy, if the companies can demonstrate that the valuation model and capital model can estimate real hedge performance accurately. The speakers of this session will discuss the hedging implication of the proposed AG 43/VM-21 and C3 Phase II framework. Additionally, methodology computational requirements, back-testing results under different economic scenarios and the resulting hedge credits of different hedging strategies will be compared, including explicit dynamic hedge and implicit dynamic hedge. The speakers will also touch on the impact of rebalance frequency on the performance of dynamic hedge. Case studies will be presented to provide guidance on practical implementation.

Description: Techniques that have gained some traction in general (property/casualty) insurance will be highlighted with a particular focus on the linear mixed model. This model adds random effects to the more commonly seen fixed effects (for example, as used in GLMs).

Description: Critical Illness Insurance is one of the fastest growing insurance products available today. Carriers continue to introduce innovative approaches in second, third, and fourth generation products while refining their pricing, underwriting, and claims adjudication processes. This session will look back at historical trends using Gen Re's longstanding, comprehensive Critical Illness Market Survey, and look forward to potential market changes to occur in the next 18 months.

Description: The key tasks of credit risk capital project under CROSS II mainly focus onL(1 )Adjustment of measurement framework; (2) Calibration of risk factors, including both credit spread risk and credit default risk;3)Introduction of concentration risk measurement; (4) Higher requirement on look-through rule.

Description: Learn industry best practices including challenges faced by retirees, such as needing exposure to growth, most exposed to sequencing risk, and the need for smooth returns to avoid poor investor behavior caused by risk aversion. Other topics will include how to set investment objectives which consider the members’ real-world needs and how to build portfolios and implement risk management strategies to meet those objectives. The speaker will provide real-life examples/case studies.

Description: The last three decades have witnessed an important rise in number of people with diabetes in Asia, especially Type 2 Diabetes. Like no other common condition, numerous innovations are currently entering the healthcare system that will soon have a significant impact on management of the condition. This presentation explores the role played by sensors/wearables, artificial intelligence, new drugs and diabetes apps. We assess the realistic potential of such advancements and give an outlook on medium-term pricing and product development.

Description: Maintaining solid financial performance is a KPI for senior management. With the advancement of technology, the management can leverage new techniques to improve their decision making and focus on higher value activities in a timely manner. This presentation sets out the use of 1. correlation analysis to draw relationship between financial metrics and 2. smart analytics techniques, including text mining and analytics, to identify trends and drivers that impact the valuation of a company. We will also assess how the results of a comprehensive financial analysis could influence risk management considerations, including business steering and risk strategy.

Description: The academy generator is now a staple for actuarial practice. Initially confined to regulatory reserving, increasingly companies are using the AAA/SoA generator for a wider and wider range of applications which in some cases may be at the limits of what it was designed for. How is the AAA/SoA generator being applied in reserving, risk management and variable annuity lines of business? What are some of the challenges actuaries face in using this framework and what are the options for addressing them.

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: Through much of the Baby Boomer generation's working lifetime, retirement planning focused on asset accumulation. Strategies like Dollar-Cost Averaging and Asset Diversification became well understood by nearly everyone in the retirement industry. As those assets move into the payout phase (post retirement), the appropriateness of those strategies becomes less clear. Presenters will aim to exhibit and explain how and why adding a Single Premium Immediate Annuity (SPIA) or Deferred Income Annuity (DIA) to a retirement portfolio can help to minimize a retiree's chance of outliving his or her income, and why sellers of annuities should focus more heavily on these product offerings. At the conclusion of the session, attendees will be able to - Identify the reasons why effective asset accumulation strategies may be ineffective in the decumulation phase of retirement - Evaluate the benefit of using at least a portion of accumulated retirement assets to purchase a fixed income stream that the annuitant is guaranteed not to outlive - Explain the benefits of a SPIA/DIA focus to other industry practitioners

Description: The presenters will explore policyholder experience data for long-term products, risks of over-fitting data in developing behavioral models, and ways to mitigate these risks and develop a sustainable and coherent framework to translate complex policyholder behavior experience data to behavioral models using company- and industry-level data. At the conclusion of the session, attendees will be able to: - Identify key drivers of policyholder behavior for long-term product - Understand the risks of over-fitting data and a false sense of precision in developing behavioral mode - Understand techniques that can be used to mitigate these risk

Description: With advancement of computing technology and innovative product design, creating dependent and nested stochastic scenarios to accurately predict insurance business has become more feasible and affordable than it used to be. However, can technology and research be accessible, applicable and beneficial to all the stakeholders? Sharing research findings and its validation tools has been our interest and focus, and even a resource-saving strategy. The presenters will share a case study on a segregated fund with hedging strategy. We investigate the reserve calculation for its GMMB in an extensive but simplified stochastic model so that our method is adoptable, applicable and extendable to real-word segregated fund/separate account model. The segregated fund model theory and implementation will be presented and its cash flows will be simulated and analyzed for reserve calculation. Varying parameter assumptions will be tested and to be modified for real-world segregated fund with hedging risk for guaranteed benefits. At the conclusion of the session, attendees will gain basic understanding of and access to: - The option pricing model and its application to the segregated fund (variable annuity's separate account) guarantee - Stochastic scenario generators for the interest rates and equity returns - R-code to program from the scenarios simulations to cash flows of hedging errors - Reserve calculations and its sensitivity to various parameter values and - Comparison of methods to increasing efficiency level and the accuracy

Description: Predictive models can improve the traditional actuarial assumption-setting process. Data science techniques can provide deeper insights into experience through their ability to identify key drivers, rank importance and account for interactions. The presenters will cover ways in which companies can utilize predictive analytics to set assumptions, including the various methods available and practical approaches for implementation. They will also discuss the advantages and challenges of using predictive models for setting assumptions for life, annuity and disability products.

Description: Managed strategies as underlying investments in VA/FIA products have seen spectacular growth since the financial crisis. The speakers of these sessions will share their views on the development of this market and what is expected to unfold over the next 12 months in regard to the next generation of products and fund-based strategies.

Description: Reinsurance has been available for VA Guarantees for over 20 years. During that time, the reinsurance market for VA Guarantees has undergone frequent and sometimes violent transformations. Where does the market stand today? What forms and structures of reinsurance are available? Which VA Guarantee designs and features are easier to reinsure? Is reinsurance offered on both newly issued policies as well as in force/legacy books, and which vintages are difficult to reinsure? In an age of sophisticated hedging programs, what role does a reinsurer play in helping a VA writer manage this highly volatile risk? In this session, we will hear from a reinsurer that is actively writing new VA Guarantee reinsurance treaties in the U.S. and around the world, and from a VA writer that has successfully partnered with a reinsurer to enhance its VA product offering.

Description: This session will explore several critical elements in developing a sustainable and coherent framework to translate complex annuity (VA and FIA) policyholder behavior experience data to assumption models using company- and industry-level data, as well as inforce management techniques to handle related risks.

Description: The Society of Actuaries are once again offering a seminar that investigates all aspects of life insurance, annuity and long term care product tax compliance. Developed by the Taxation Section, participants will be brought up-to-date on recent Internal Revenue Service (IRS) guidance and learn about the newest tax issues related to product design and administration. Legal, IRS and product development experts will provide vital insights into the challenges of developing and administering products within the requirements of the Internal Revenue Code (IRC), and allow ample opportunities for networking, questions and information exchange.

Description: This session will provide an overview of the evolution of equity-based guarantees (e.g. VA, FIA, etc.) over the last few years and discuss the current lay of the land as it relates to the regulatory, issues, capital markets (e.g. Department of Labor, Dodd-Frank) environment in which these products are offered.

Description: The presentation will outline the different possibilities insurance companies have to hedge their equity risk for the various products.

Description: The speaker of this session will provide a bottom up analysis and categorization of the $200 billion of volatility control funds related investments while recapping volatility control fund trading around volatility spikes (including Aug. 2015 and June 2016). The assessment of potential market impact of the volatility control funds’ rebalancing activity will also be discussed.

Description: The speaker of this session will discuss some common difficulties one encounters when dealing with exotic equity linked derivatives. In particular, a study of a Monthly Sum Cap (MSC) will be presented. Pricing issues, along with dynamic hedging, as well as projections of MSC into the future will also be discussed. Time permitting, some aspects of historical performance will also be addressed

Description: Mr. Rallis will discuss trends in the market for risk transfer of defined benefit plans in the US. He will also address implications of increasing longevity.

Description: Panelists discuss keys to successful disability reinsurance arrangements including excess, and turnkey/quota share reinsurance. Topics include financial terms, administrative provisions, claims, underwriting, tax and regulatory implications. From the Record of the Society of Actuaries, Vol. 31, No. 2, Session 81

Description: The Medicare Modernization Act has created numerous opportunities and as many questions for insurers as well as employers that provide retiree medical coverage. This session focuses on Medicare Part D and new accounting standards. From the Record of the Society of Actuaries, Vol. 31, No.2, Session 38

Description: Presented at May 2005 Spring Meeting. This session examines financial, economic and traditional actuarial methodological approaches used for solving investment-risk problems.

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: Presented at May 2005 Spring Meeting. Panelists discuss the use of stochastic embedded value 'EV' in financial management and risk measurement, including considerations in reconciling period-to-period results.

Description: Presented at May 2005 Spring Meeting. Panelists discuss the process of setting long-term investment assumptions from a practical perspective, including changes in equity return premium, use of risk-neutral scenarios and methodology, and special considerations for setting pricing scenarios.

Description: A panel of appointed actuaries, along with substantial audience participation, shares perspectives and practical experience in fulfilling the duties and responsibilities of the appointed actuary. Session 18OF of the 2005 Valuation Actuary Symposium.

Description: The panel offers a summary of the Medicare Modernization Act signed into law in 2003, which implemented sweeping changes to the Medicare program. Topics include Medicare Advantage, the impact on Medicare Supplement, Part D, and the impact on retiree health plans. From Record of Society of Actuaries, Vol. 30, No. 3, Session 127

Description: 2004 SOA Annual Meeting and Exhibit, New York. This discussion looked at individual life insurance and annuity products and the risks these guarantees carry, such as: 1. Extended maturity benefits. 2. Secondary guarantees. 3. Guaranteed insurability. 4. Guaranteed minimum living and death benefits in VA.

Description: 2004 SOA Annual Meeting and Exhibit, New York. This session is about pricing life and VA products with untested new features in an uncertain environment.

Description: The session at the 2004 Valuation Actuary Symposium describes current risk mitigation techniques and their impact upon valuation systems including hedging mechanisms, regulatory relief, GAAP measurement, product 'quarantine', realistic assumption changes, maximizing returns and minimizing litigation.

Description: This session at the 2004 Valuation Actuary Symposium provides an overview of statutory valuation issues for life and annuity products including the Actuarial Opinion and Memorandum Regulation, variable products reserving standard, adoption of 2001 CSO, C-3 Phase II RBC project and nonforfeiture changes.

Description: Panelists in this session at the 2004 Valuation Actuary Symposium discuss current embedded value and fair-value practices, similarities and differences between embedded value and fair value, and benefits and drawbacks of embedded value, fair value and other measurement systems for internal management purposes.

Description: This panel discussion at the 2004 Valuation Actuary Symposium provides an overview of the current risk-based capital [RBC] requirements for life insurers, as well as insight into topical issues and potential changes in RBC.

Description: This session at the 2004 Valuation Actuary Symposium offers a basic understanding of how to calculate statutory reserves, GAAP reserves, and deferred acquisition cost for a universal life product.

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: The panelists in this session discuss recent developments impacting the actuarial valuation of retiree health benefits. Topics include Medicare prescription drug reform, FAS 106, and proposed GASB statements. From the Record of the Society of Actuaries, Volume 30, No. 1, Session 19

Description: This open forum begins with a presentation of the final report of the Society of Actuaries Individual Disability Experience Committee. This report encompasses claim incidence and termination rates based on a decade of industry experience. From Record of Society of Actuaries, Vol. 30, No. 1.

Description: Panelists discuss key public policy issues relating to access, coverage, and financing of health care, as well as current health care reform proposals. From the Record of the Society of Actuaries, Volume 30, No. 1, Session 47

Description: This session from the 2003 SOA Orlando Meeting discusses the new risk-based capital RBC requirements for variable annuities with guranteed benefits such as guaranteed minimum death benefits - GMDBs and guaranteed minimum income benefits - GMIBs. From the Society of Actuaries Record, Volume 29, No. 3.

Description: This session at the 2003 Valuation Actuary Symposium discusses asset model validation techniques. Applying the results of a cash-flow testing model to other uses is explored. Also, the proliferation of embedded option derivatives, both on the asset and liability side of the balance sheet, both for pricing and for valuation, are discussed.

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. In this open forum participants' questions were addressed by experts in the field. Some of the questions: 1. How does actuarial practice develop with regard to questions about interim results and asset-adequacy analysis projections? 2. If the present value measures used in typical asset-adequacy evaluation include a favorable adequacy opinion, are there patterns of interim results that under commonly accepted actuarial practice would require additional reserves to be established? 3. What is the most extreme stochastic modeling that you have seen? How many scenarios on how large a block, on how complex a model, on how many PCs or what type of computer that ran for over how many days? 4. Is codification retroactive? Does it impact any previous reserving methodologies put in place on policies issued before codification was effective? 5. What are your individual views on whether the federal government should provide a backstop to group or individual life insurance to handle terrorism catastrophes? 6. What are your thoughts are on the move toward stochastic methods for setting reserves?

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: 2003 Valuation Actuary Symposium, San Diego, CA. This session provided an update on the current status of the actuarial guidelines on VA death and living benefits, the Academy's work on a non-formulaic, RBC standard and GAAP developments.

Description: 2003 Valuation Actuary Symposium, San Diego, CA. This session provided an overview of current statutory valuation issues pertaining to life and annuity products. Topics included: 1. Actuarial opinion and memorandum regulation amendments. 2. Progress on variable products reserving standards. 3. Regulation XXX mortality factors. 4. Adoption of the 2001 CSO. 5. Progress on the C-3 Phase II RBC project. 6. An update on annuity and life nonforfeiture.

Description: 2003 Valuation Actuary Symposium, San Diego, CA. This teaching session described current risk mitigation techniques and their impact upon valuation systems. Topics included: 1. Hedging mechanisms. 2. Policy updates. 3. Regulatory relief. 4. Anticipating evolution of GAAP measurement. 5. Product quarantine. 6. Realistic assumption changes, 7. Maximizing return and minimizing litigation.

Description: 2003 Valuation Actuary Symposium, San Diego, CA. This panel of appointed actuaries shared their perspectives and practical experiences in fulfilling the duties and responsibilities of the appointed actuary with the goal of providing a better understanding of the duties and responsibilities of the appointed actuary, supporting actuaries and staff.

Description: 2003 Valuation Actuary Symposium, San Diego, CA. This session discussed embedded value concepts. Topics included: 1. General overview of embedded value. 2. Components of embedded value. 3. Setting assumptions. 4. Practical applications.

Description: A panel of actuaries and clinical consultants at this session of the SOA 2003 Vancouver Spring Meeting provides an assessment of current and future applications of predictive modeling techniques in the health arena. A practical example of risk adjustment, discussion of the clinical use of this technique, and applications in underwriting are discussed.

Description: This session discusses the progress of an updated individual disability table. It includes a summary of the initial results of incidence rate studies based on the contributed data. From the Record of the Society of Actuaries, Vol. 29, No. 2, Session 39

Description: Topics to be discussed include various regulator and industry benchmarks, comparative data on capital and surplus levels among health carriers, and capital allocation and modeling techniques used to assign capital to various lines of business. From Record of the SOA, Vol. 29, No. 2, Session 20

Description: This session at the SOA 2003 Washington, DC Spring Meeting examines the nuts and bolts of implementing a capital markets hedge program for offsetting the market risk embedded in variable annuity and equity-indexed annuity products..