Description: Investment Fallacies: The Best Model Doesn't Win

Description: This article describes how there are many kinds of plans and arrangements under which qualified annuities are issued, and the rules governing them differ considerably.

Description: This presentation, session number 79PD, took place at the 1999 Spring Meeting of the Society of Actuaries, held June 16-18 in Seattle. The panelists examine the history, growth, and the purpose of mutual life insurance companies, and the current interest in demutualization and the formation of the mutual holding company. They look at the current changing conditions—legal, economic, and market, and the search for alternative ways to access the capital markets. Topics include company management, advisors, regulators and their concerns, and recent activities among supporters and opponents of mutual company structure. Discussion from participants is included. From the Record of the Society of Actuaries, Vol. 25, No. 2.

Description: Investment Fallacies: The Misconceptions of Retirement Risks

Description: This panel discussed studies of the risk of loss due to changes in the interest rate environment. It addressed why the C-3 risk is important and how inflation and stability in interest rates can affect the financial soundness of life insurance companies. There was also a discussion of the theoretical work being carried out to calibrate the C-3 risk of variation in interest rates and to what extent the valuation actuary can properly recognize the risk of loss from changes in the interest rate environment within the framework of valuations laws and regulations.

Description: This dialogue discusses the history and purpose of section 811(a) and its historic role in the computation of life insurance company taxable income and, in particular, reserves.

Description: Investment Fallacies: Extended periods of robust macroeconomic growth are healthy for investing.

Description: Describes how the mantra of 'tax cuts will pay for themselves" along with the political unwillingness to cut spending (extant since the 1980s), has led to this increasing debt problem in the U.S., reaching $17 trillion at time of writing. Other countries are behaving in a similar fashion, and it can be only a matter of time before the globe may reach another crisis, this time based on excessive government debt coupled with fewer interested investors.

Description: Discussion of how meaningful GAAP ROE is as a measurement of management performance or how well management has deployed capital over a reporting period.

Description: Investment Fallacies: A real-world approach to Value at Risk