Description: Discussion of solvency problems and the actuary's role in addressing them in the life insurance industry.

Description: The decrease in interest rates over the last several years has led to decreases in the maximum valuation rate and maximum nonforfeiture interest rate, and companies need to prepare for these changes.

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

Description: A pension actuary and a life actuary collaborate to express public pension liability and asset issues in terms and figures that an insurer would use

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 and indexed variable annuities. 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 approaches 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 regarding the difficulty of risk management.

Description: A review of recent trends in immediate non-refund annuity mortality and a presentation of a modification of the a-1949 Table with Projection Scale B which reflects these recent mortality trends. Followed by several discussion papers submitted

Description: These are submitted discussion papers on the paper, 'Annuity Mortality' by Walter G. Bowerman.

Description: This paper presents commutation columns for the a-1949 Table at 3 1/2% for Males and Females.

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 and indexed variable annuities. 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 approaches 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 regarding the difficulty of risk management.

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.