Description: Future mortality improvement has been a common assumption in life insurance and annuity pricing and forecasting for many years. However, experience over the last decade suggests this might be an assumption that merits reconsideration in the United States. This article will take a closer look at factors that impact mortality improvement trends and discuss why insurers may want to reevaluate product designs to better manage the associated mortality risk. We then introduce a product idea with this in mind, where premiums are based on a life expectancy index and insurers share the risk (and opportunity) or mortality improvement with policyholders.

Description: Illustrative impacts on new business profitability of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act for a variety of different life and annuity product types

Description: Continuation of article from previous issue. This article illustrates the practical and financial implications of applying nested stochastic techniques to a sample product.

Description: The last few years have seen a dramatic change in the way that insurance products are priced. If we traveled back in time 15 to 20 years, we would see a world where most insurance products were priced on the basis of a few static scenarios. In the last several years, pricing on a stochastic basis has become more mainstream—at least for contracts with embedded guarantees.