Description: This literature guide provides a basic grounding in policyholder dividends and other nonguaranteed elements in individual life insurance and annuities in Canada and the U.S. Participating insurance is most often offered by mutuals in the U.S. and by both mutual and stock companies in Canada.

Description: The financial reporting of insurance is necessarily a complicated process because of numerous and stringent regulatory requirements, the inherent difficulty in estimating both the probability and cost of long-term contingent events, product diversity, and new products, such as equity-linked annuities. This literature guide provides the user with a summary of representative sources of current general information for continuing education purposes.