Description: Description of the vast variety of predictive analytics topics covered by the Forecasting & Futurism section and introduction to the July 2015 issue of the newsletter.

Description: Panelist discuss issues relating to new medical technologies and how these are going to affect the practice of medicine, the delivery of care, the costs of care, the insuring of care, claims handling, utilization, and cost management. From the Record of the Society of Actuaries, Vol. 25, No. 2.

Description: Behavioral economics is the alternative to the traditional ways (surveys and focus groups) we've been using to try to understand the drivers of customer behavior in the insurance industry. It merges psychology with traditional economic theory, offering insights into individual decision making behavior that go beyond the purely rational model. Within the sphere of health insurance, there are countless behaviors, not just of customers, but of underwriters, medical professionals and claims specialists which may be better explained by behavioral economics. Applying concepts from behavioral economics in live trials it is possible to bring about benefits such as increasing sales and retention rates, improving claims processing and encouraging more accurate disclosure. Swiss Re's global research team partners with its reinsurance clients to incorporate behavioral economics concepts into their letters, websites, forms and scripts by running A/B tests to understand what is driving customer behavior. The team currently has over 100 tests in progress with more than 40 clients, including many in the United States. The partnerships are producing clear business benefits, increasing sales, renewals, health disclosure and turnaround speed for claims payments. These changes are driven by small, inexpensive changes in communications with customers, and we'd like to share some of our insights with you. We've increased upsell rates, disclosure and email open rates, and reduced lapses, turnaround times and appointment no-show rates, to name just a few examples. Behavioral economics is the topic on everyone's lips with insurers and reinsurers all beginning to talk about it in earnest. Our team has been working hard for nearly 4 years and in that time instead of talking, we've been doing, and now we can share with you what a difference behavioral economics can actually make for insurance.

Description: This article is a review of the book by Joshua Foer. It covers the history of memory techniques, the way a human brain organizes memory, and various problems and successes in memory recall. The author starts by interviewing memory savants, and learns from them that the ability to perform seemingly impossible memory tricks is simply a matter of studying and practicing proven techniques used for millennia. This review suggests that actuaries can benefit greatly from some of these techniques despite the availability of electronic hand-held devices to recall facts because the person who does not need to rely upon such devices can have a huge perceptual advantage in executive presentations.

Description: Book review – this book is a concise look at the evolution of formal investment theory and related financial forecasting, with continual contextual references to its ties to gambling and to organized crime.

Description: This article is a review of the book by Joshua Foer. It covers the history of memory techniques, the way a human brain organizes memory, and various problems and successes in memory recall. The author starts by interviewing memory savants, and learns from them that the ability to perform seemingly impossible memory tricks is simply a matter of studying and practicing proven techniques used for millennia. This review suggests that actuaries can benefit greatly from some of these techniques despite the availability of electronic hand-held devices to recall facts because the person who does not need to rely upon such devices can have a huge perceptual advantage in executive presentations.

Description: Why should actuaries care about non-quantitative considerations? We are the masters of accurate calculations, and our models should be based solely upon logic … right? Wrong! The touchy-feely holistic, irrational factors encountered so often in the real world, can wreak havoc upon a model that considers only rational logic. Our 2016 presidential election was a dramatic wake-up call to statisticians and actuaries that numbers alone are not always the determining factors in economic outcomes. Learn why this is true, and how you can adapt your models to better represent the real world, and gain competitive advantage.

Description: Predictive Analytics and Epigenetics are two of the most impactful driving forces for the future of healthcare, precision medicine, and insurance. Learn why this is true, how if will change the way our industry operates, and how you can stay viable and contribute to the betterment of humanity while also protecting the actuarial profession from obsolescence. Learn how personalized medicine keying off genetic testing is saving life insurers big dollars. The only limit seems to be testing access for their insureds.

Description: This session 84I of the 2001 SAO Annual Meeting in New Orleans is about how many insurers are migrating toward Web-based interactive underwriting systems in order to economize and streamline the underwriting process. This requires some radically different techniques well beyond the time-honored traditional approaches. From the Record of the Society of Actuaries, Vol 27, No. 3