Description: Variable annuity (VA) writers are facing many challenges in today's economic environment. Equity market volatility and low interest rates make guaranteed benefits increasingly expensive to hedge. Both GAAP Long Duration Targeted Improvements and the recent VM-21 changes will drive the need to manage the VA business under a new set of lenses. During this session, the presenters will explore the various in-force management tools VA writers have available and comment on their effectiveness.

Description: The academy generator is now a staple for actuarial practice. Initially confined to regulatory reserving, increasingly companies are using the AAA/SoA generator for a wider and wider range of applications which in some cases may be at the limits of what it was designed for. How is the AAA/SoA generator being applied in reserving, risk management and variable annuity lines of business? What are some of the challenges actuaries face in using this framework and what are the options for addressing them.

Description: Living benefits (GLWBs) in fixed index annuity products are typically accounted for under SOP03-1 under current GAAP guidance. LDTI requires companies to classify these riders as Market Risk Benefit (MRB). This webcast focuses on challenges and considerations of the MRB implementation. Industry practices of the reserving approach will be shared during this webcast, as well as hedging and pricing implications.

Description: Life and annuity markets around the world have seen increasingly complex investment-combined products, including universal life, fixed indexed annuities, variable annuities with a wide variety of guaranteed benefits, indexed variable annuities, etc. Insurance companies are facing unprecedented exposure to financial risks in addition to traditional mortality and longevity risks. The risk assessment and modeling for such complex designs by conventional methods often focus heavily on their market competitiveness and profitability. However, there seems to be a lack of quantifiable and systematic approach to assess investment risks associated with investment combined products. The objective of the proposed work is to develop a framework for quantifying and analyzing various forms of contractual designs and showcase different techniques to assess the trade-off between competitive contractual designs and their practical implications with regard to the difficulty of risk management.

Description: This is a discussion of the paper, 'A Convenient Method of Providing for Mortality Improvement Based on the a-1949 Table' by James E. Hoskins. Discusses seriousness of errors that can develop under certain circumstances, provides a formula for adjusting by modes of payment, discusses circumstances in which differences between Hoskins' method and Projection B is greater than in the example used in the paper, etc.

Description: This paper builds a model that quantifies the natural hedging benefits of a portfolio of both variable annuities and equity indexed annuities. The model is based on risk-neutral option pricing theory and risk-adjusted performance measure, RAPM. Through a double-tier simulation framework, an optimum product mixture of those two contracts is achieved that provides the best RAPM and therefore deploys capital the most efficiently. From 2006 Enterprise Risk Management Symposium, M-AS06-1.

Description: Historically different approaches have been used by actuaries in modeling mortality improvement. The SOA has recently released a framework that practitioners can use to project mortality improvement, providing methodological consistency across a range of applications.

Description: 1992 SOA Annual Meeting, Washington, D.C. This session discussion was about the performance measurement in a risk/return context, incentive compensation as a tool for achieving effective performance, and return attribution using liability-based performance indices.

Description: This paper shows the mortality element can be partially isolated allowing an exact annuity value to be readily obtained at any interest rate. From the Actuarial Research Clearing House 1979, Vol.2.

Description: Reinsurance can be used as a tool to improve profitability and competitiveness on in force and new business for companies. Emerging reinsurance solutions will help organizations better manage their capital in different ways. During this webcast, the following solutions will be covered: Use of reinsurance to manage and improve capital and profitability Turning spread-based business into fee-based business Strategic use of affiliate and sidecar reinsurance