Description: This paper provides guidance to employers who are contemplating the use of COLI as a means for funding employee benefits. Commentary will be provided on critical issues to consider when analyzing the benefits of COLI, including product characteristics, cost considerations, legal considerations, representations and warranties, investments, and accounting. “Best Practices” pricing guarantees, representations, warranties, and indemnities will be provided as examples and are generally indicative of the stronger positions taken to date on each issue. This paper does not provide guidance on group term life or other non-COLI products.

Description: Enhanced or impaired annuities are life annuities underwritten to reflect annuitants' actual mortality. They are not currently prevalent in the U.S. or Canada, where life annuities assume low mortality and are thus unfair for impaired lives. This paper looks at the present annuity marketplace in the United States and Canada. It also reviews the underwriting and marketing of life annuities in the United Kingdom where “enhanced” life annuities are available for a broader cross section of the marketplace. It also reviews the use of P&C risk classification techniques and how they might apply to the annuity marketplace as well as potential legal constraints on broader risk classification for life annuities.

Description: This paper defines health expectancy as that part of life expectancy where the person is expected to be healthy. It also breaks down the remainder of life expectancy into two unhealthy categories, one where assisted living will be necessary, and one where a skilled nursing facility will be necessary. These expectations are calculated for many combinations of age, other demographic characteristics, and current health issues.

Description: This paper illustrates the calculation of embedded value of an insurance company. The principles should be applicable to similar calculations for other companies.

Description: U.K. life insurers writing participating business have, since the end of 2004, been required by their regulator, the Financial Services Authority FSA, to value their assets and liabilities on a market-consistent basis. The purpose of this paper is to explain the new valuation approach based on market-consistent values and its rationale set out the issues faced by life insurers in implementing the new regime and explain how these issues have been addressed by insurers.

Description: This paper describes the Federal Income Tax FIT treatment of reserves historically. Then it describes Principles-Based Reserves PBR. Finally, it discusses issues in the treatment of PBR under FIT.

Description: This paper introduces a rich stochastic modeling framework for understanding risks in multiple-decrement contracts. The example in the paper is a 20-year Term insurance contract. Not only are mortality and lapsation considered stochastic, but the parameters governing them are. For example, mortality risk is composed of four risk elements, including error generated in the underwriting process, volatility around the best estimate, catastrophic events that impact mortality, and the trend in mortality improvement or deterioration. When stochastically modeled, the relative contribution and risk profile of each risk element can be evaluated. Generating stochastic mortality results provides a distribution of results that an organization faces and the severity and incidence of the tail events.

Description: This paper considers the question of whether the growth in the size of financial statements witnessed over the last several years has yielded an increase in the quality of disclosure around issues of financial risk and to what extent this disclosure is satisfying the perceived needs of readers of the financial statements, as represented by the investment analyst community.

Description: This report provides estimated savings for several of the options that are available to plan sponsors after implementation of the Medicare prescription drug program.

Description: This paper describes in detail each of five options available to small Texas employers wanting to purchase insurance for their employees. It then describes the advantages and disadvantages to the various players: carriers, employers, employees, and agents. It points out that each player will act in its own interest.