Description: 1999 SOA Annual Meeting, San Francisco. This panel discussion dealt with several new product types and the accounting profession's efforts to provide guidance. The five product types below do not fit neatly into the rules set forth in Statement of Financial Accounting Standards 50 and 97: 1. Variable annuities with guaranteed living benefits. 2. Equity-indexed products. 3. Market-value-adjusted annuities. 4. Annuities with a front-end bonus feature. 5. Investment contracts with no significant source of profit other than interest spread.

Description: Accounting Standards Update (ASU) 2018-12, commonly referred to as long duration targeted improvements (LDTI), is the most significant GAAP accounting change impacting the life insurance industry in the past 40 years. This article discusses the impact of LDTI on variable annuities (VA) and fixed indexed annuities (FIA) from a product development and in-force management angle. Detailed discussion topics include hedging and ALM, product strategy and development, and pricing. LDTI will cause many VA and FIA writers to re-evaluate their hedging and asset liability management (ALM) strategy following the move to fair value accounting under the new MRB requirement. Stakeholder appetite for accounting volatility and resulting changes to hedging and ALM may trigger changes in product mix and designs. In addition to updating pricing infrastructure to handle the new requirements, pricing actuaries will need to produce analyses to educate stakeholders on the risks and pricing implications of any changes to designs, hedging and ALM.