Description: The article described two methods for calculating the benefit ratio described in AICPA Standard of Practice SOP 03-1. Method 1 calculates the benefit ratio as the quotient of the expectation of A and the expectation of B where A is benefits and B is assessments. Method 2 calculates the benefit ratio as the expectation of the quotient of A and B.

Description: From a session at the Spring meeting of the Society of Actuaries held in San Antonio, Texas, June 14-15, 2004 This session addressed aspects of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, including a discussion of the history and purpose of the act, processes of compliance and their documentation, identification of key controls and testing for key control effectiveness.

Description: This session at the SOA 2001 Toronto Spring Meeting focuses on FAS 133, which defines accounting for derivatives, embedded options and hedging activities. Details of FAS 133 and implementation issues are discussed.

Description: In session 118 TS of the Washington Annual Meeting panelists discuss the growth in variable annuities and the increased insurance industry exposure to mortality risk associated with GMDB. The focus of this session is on current practices in the areas of reserving for GMDB and modeling the GMDB risk. From the Record of the Society of Actuaries, Vol. 23, No. 3.

Description: A discussion of alternative meanings to “Best” in best estimate. When one is trying to estimate a result that is normally distributed, the mean, median and mode will all equal one another. However if the results are not normally distributed, different variance metrics will result in different “best” estimates. When different parts of a financial statement use different criteria for measuring best estimates and different processes for handling variances, the results can be volatile, unpredictable and perhaps unreasonable.