Description: The comments of DxCG about their participation in the SOA study A Comparative Analysis of Claims-Based Tools for Health Risk Assessment.

Description: Using the recent West Africa Ebola outbreak as an example, the authors discuss several modeling approaches that can be useful for estimating pandemic risk.

Description: The article provides a high-level, non-technical, introduction to artificial neural networks (ANNs) and deep learning with an application to risk management. The method relies on typical ANN components such as nodes, activation functions, and optimization through gradient descent.

Description: This article discusses the concept of Conservation of Mortality ("Conservation"). Conservation is the modeling principle that ensures consistency between assumptions of the total mortality of a population and mortality among population subsets. This article discusses the use cases for Conservation and the many ways that one could implement it in a model or an experience study. This article also discusses the potential issues that arise when using Conservation, and how one might solve or alleviate these issues.

Description: This panel discussion considers some of the approaches, techniques and problems in the development of corporate models and assumptions. The pros and cons of buying versus developing models was discussed and the use of deterministic versus stochastic models was addressed as well.

Description: A summary of Modeling Section-sponsored sessions at the 2016 Life/Annuity Symposium, covering model risk management, model governance, and model efficiency.

Description: Summary of the SOA's research report Modern Deterministic Scenarios for Interest Rates, which developed interest rate scenarios for use in cash flow testing.

Description: This paper uses a mortality surge model to estimate the total financial impact on the U.S. insurance industry of a flu pandemic. It does not attempt to determine the probability of such a pandemic.

Description: The author provides an overview of terms that have gained favor in sociology, physics, engineering and anthropology that should be of interest to actuaries.

Description: Summary of the SOA research project on PBR Simplified Methods. Describes the multi-risk scenario generator, central estimate assumptions, assumption objectivity measures, and regulatory demonstrations per VM-20.