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: 1992 SOA Regional Meeting, Anaheim. This session provided an update of topics relating to individual annuity products. Subjects covered included: 1. The marketing and design of variable annuities, fixed interest rate annuities and market-value adjusted annuities. 2. Immediate annuities with participation and liquidity features.

Description: Discussion of the biases understatement of risk/reserves that arise when aggregating cells in modeling Variable Annuity Minimum Guaranteed Death Benefits

Description: In this session from the 1995 Spring Meeting, panelists will discuss the structure, cost, and reserving practices of variable annuity guaranteed minimum death benefits. They also identify and meaure the risks associated with GMDBs. It From Record of Society of Actuaries Vol. 21, No. 1.

Description: New Zealand is about to launch its first variable annuity with guaranteed lifetime withdrawal benefits. The product design is mindful of the lessons from the financial crisis in the United States, Europe and Japan.

Description: The Policyholder Behavior in the Tail Risk Management Section Working Group issued its fifth survey to gather the range of assumptions actuaries use in pricing, reserving, and risk management of minimum guarantees on Variable Annuity products, such as death benefits, income benefits, withdrawal benefits and maturity benefits.

Description: 1994 SOA Spring Meeting, San Francisco. In this session about annuities, topics discussed included product design, regulatory, marketplace, compensation, and pricing issues.

Description: Discussion of possible hedging strategies for offsetting the investment risk for variable annuities, especially those with guaranteed benefits.

Description: From a session at the 2001 Valuation Actuary Symposium, held in Lake Buena Vista, Florida, November 29-30, 2001 Teaching session covering the development of realistic liability models for use in asset adequacy analysis, asset/liability management, pricing/repricing, financial reporting or other corporate purposes. The primary focus is modeling issues for variable product features, such as minimum living or death benefit guarantees on both variable life and annuities, annuity death benefit enhancements, and variable immediate annuities. Topics include: • Analysis of the special risks posed by these products • Selecting realistic dynamic assumptions • Techniques used in modeling these products • Scenario testing and result presentation to best communicate risks

Description: This presentation, session number 7PD, took place at the 2000 Annual Meeting of the Society of Actuaries, held October 15-18 in Chicago. The panelists discusses current separate account product topics including quantifying the cost of guarantees such as minimum death benefits and minimum living benefits, and equity-indexed product investing and hedging. Discussion from participants is included. From the Record of the Society of Actuaries, Volume 26, No. 3.