Description: Recognizing the benefit for actuarial discussions about how COVID-19 will affect our work, the Smaller Insurance Company Section of the Society of Actuaries hosted “COVID-19: What a Smaller Insurance Company Actuary Needs to Know Virtual Town Hall” on April 17, 2020. The following delves into these presentations and discussions.

Description: This session will kick off the key National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) activities, with a primary focus on updates to principle-based reserve valuations and appointed actuary topics. The presenters will provide insights into the current set of activities and initiatives being considered by the NAIC Life Actuarial Task Force (LATF) and Life Risk-Based Capital Working Group, as well as activities being undertaken by American Academy of Actuaries committees and work groups.

Description: This is an article providing a summary of the SOA Research Institute's participation in an NAIC meeting that took place in December 2022. This article will also be disseminated via the SOA News Weekly, linking to the article posted on soa.org.

Description: The National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) has developed the Group Capital Calculation (GCC) for U.S.-based insurance groups since late 2015. GCC is designed to provide a coherent analytical framework to show a panoramic, transparent view of the interconnectedness, business activities and underlying capital support for an insurance group. The last field testing was completed in May 2019. The final proposal was adopted in late 2020. The Federal Reserve Board (FSB) also recently updated the group capital standard to an aggregation method, which is similar to the NAIC GCC. The Insurance Capital Standard (ICS) is under the development by International Association of Insurance Supervisors (IAIS) for Internationally Active Insurance Groups (IAIGs). It has entered the five-monitoring period from January 2020 to monitor the performance of the ICS V2.0 and the IAIS will perform a comparability assessment of the ICS V2.0 with the Aggregation Method (e.g. NAIC GCC) during this period.

Description: 2020 and 2021 presented numerous challenges to life and annuity product development actuaries. External forces required carriers to rethink underwriting requirements and risk assessment in real time. Alterations in regulatory frameworks and statutory requirements forced changes to product development priorities while alterationsin the work environment forced changes in how work routines were structured. This session will bring together a group of life and annuity stakeholders to discuss how they addressed these and other challenges, and how their work will be impacted going forward.

Description: Summary of a survey conducted by Milliman of 28life insurers on the impact of AG49 and AG49-A on their Indexed Universal Life products.

Description: This report is a comprehensive survey of existing literature on mortality and race and ethnicity in the United States, examining disparities in mortality rates among different racial and ethnic groups. It explores factors influencing mortality differentials, including socioeconomic status, health care access, and other relevant aspects.

Description: Two years ago, before COVID-19 changed everything about how we provide and receive health care, telehealth was largely provided by third-party vendors to treat a narrow range of acute one-and-done conditions. The value proposition was simple: a fast and easy member experience would drive satisfaction and engagement; high member satisfaction and engagement would drive health plan savings and member retention. Clearly, from the perspective of utilization, telehealth—as a viable alternative to in-person care during a pandemic—worked. And with COVID-19’s nudge—or was that a push?—toward cultural acceptance, the health care system is in a better position to capitalize on telehealth’s original promise of expanded access, lower cost and better outcomes than it was two years ago. But in the wake of the pandemic, it is just as clear to us that if telehealth is to live up to its full potential, some changes are needed. The rest of this article presents five ideas for improving the delivery of telehealth going forward.

Description: This document is a Request for Proposals (RFP) outlining a proposal request on the impact of the U.S. drug abuse epidemic on mortality, focusing on opioids. It provides details on the background, purpose, research objectives, proposal requirements, selection process, and conditions for submitting a proposal.

Description: State regulators continue to focus on the emergence of private equity firms purchasing life insurance companies, supporting reinsurance transactions, and the growing trend in life companies owning more complex assets. Modeling of complex assets is also growing in focus to balance risk and return parameters in forward financial models and asset adequacy testing. Hear from actuaries, regulators and rating agencies as they present the latest developments for the future of the intersection of private equity and life insurance companies and the potential for new regulatory guidance.