Description: The Society of Actuaries’ Committee on Finance Research and Joint Risk Management Section Research Committee are pleased to make available a research report developing a framework for quantifying and analyzing various forms of contractual designs.

Description: Investment risk management has become a core competency of insurance companies, and much has been discussed on this topic. This session examines the current investment risk management practices such as product line specific hedging and macro hedging, with a focus on what still remains to be addressed—whether the tradeoff of addition risk management is worthwhile.

Description: In this session, we will explore investment solutions that aim to maintain the long-term viability of a pension plan, with considerations on hedging interest rates, credit, inflation, longevity and other risks, while accounting for the many particularities associated with underlying liabilities and their corresponding ramifications.

Description: Discussion of FinTech including PIMCO research on 401(k) use of managed accounts and observations about cybersecurity, genetic data, and retirement spend down.

Description: Read the August 2018 issue of Risks & Rewards published by the Investment Section.

Description: This presentation considers a stochastic model for a target benefit pension fund in continuous time.

Description: Insurance companies utilize derivatives in a variety of ways to manage and mitigate risks that are inherent in their investment or liability portfolios. They can be characterized by three main features: medium long-term duration; large volumes; and significant market risk exposure. Given the persistent low interest rate environment across the curve since the 2008 financial crisis, large companies need to hedge their liabilities, as illustrated by the significant recent increase from $786 billion as of fiscal year 2010 to $1,885 billion as of FY 2014 by insurance companies.As the Variable Annuities (VA) guarantees embedded within those liabilities hold a strong convex risk profile with respect to the underlying stock, VA carriers need to buy some convex hedge assets such as options to match the liability risk profile to improve hedge effectiveness, implying the growing cost of hedging. Such market impact of the quantity on the cost of hedging is further magnified in the recent period with the short-lived, but sharp transitions from low volatility to high volatility, when market volatility suddenly increases, even when there were no well-known fundamental catalysts. This partially stems from the growing managed volatility funds embedded within VA ($bn 400).VA carriers willing to trade a large quantity of options will see such market impact as an important dilemma, as the cost of placing one large order to close position will be far greater than the sum of infinitely small orders differed in time. In that context, managing market impact requires introducing an explicit market impact function, the influence of which the agent will try to minimize. The effect on hedge asset prices significantly depends on whether there is or not significant delta hedging activity. In case of no significant delta hedging activity, the risk appetite has a significant influence on the optimal execution strategy. If there is significant delta hedging activity, the optimal trading involve

Description: A brief overview of modeling bonds and mortgages

Description: Explains the method used to calculate Liquidity Cost Score and Price Impact Score. Describes the rationale for and applications of these methods.

Description: Up until recent past, the artificial intelligence portion of data science was looked upon cautiously due to its history of booms and flops . In the latest stream of events, major improvements have taken place in this field and now deep learning, the new leading front for Artificial Intelligence, presents a promising prospect for overcoming problems of big data.

Description: This article delves into the challenges and opportunities of the Asian insurance market, focusing on insurance investment management.

Description: Summary of Investment Council sponsored meetings as 2015 annual meeting

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: Provides an overview of special characteristics of private equity and infrastructure asset classes, based on the perspective of experienced investors

Description: Investment Fallacies: Mathematical modeling of social phenomena

Description: Investment Fallacies: The Myth of Time Diversification

Description: The goal of this paper is to examine similarities between value investing and enterprise risk management (ERM) methods.

Description: The goal of this paper is to examine similarities between value investing and enterprise risk management (ERM) methods.

Description: This study aimed to study primarily the impact of market performance on a pension plan’s ability to meet its obligations.

Description: ERM and Investment strategies for healthcare companies

Description: This is a book review of Uncertain Times: A Chief Investment Officer's Journey, by Alton R. Cogert.

Description: [Title should have been 'Communication by Actuaries WITH Investment Professionals ....'] Actuaries working with investments must communicate not only with investment professionals, but also with senior managers and board members with non-financial backgrounds. Panelists show and critique examples of communicating such information using statistics and graphs. From the 2002 Record of Society of Actuaries, Volume 28, No. 3. Session 136PD of the Boston Annual Meeting.

Description: Presented at May 2002 Spring Meeting. This session describes the general features of advance programs operated by various Federal Home Loan Banks, summarizes potential benefits to insurers and identifies key issues surrounding the programs.

Description: Presented at May 2002 Spring Meeting. Discusses the status of the second phase of the AAA C-3 Risk project. This project is leading to an updated NAIC filing requirement and is a step toward fair value. The specific focus is on equity risk and bond funds in the distribution tails. Products covered include variable life and annuities.

Description: The purpose of this paper is to present to the actuarial profession a stochastic investment model which can be used for simulations extending for many years ahead. Discussed in the paper are the general reasons for choosing the style of model, the general model and how to use it, the assumptions and the sensitivity of model to the assumptions made and the possible applications in the investment and actuarial fields.

Description: This presentation is from session number 36, presented at the 1999 Valuation Actuary Symposium, held September 23-24 in Los Angeles. Today’s low interest rate environment has helped spark enthusiasm for new investment vehicles with a potential for higher returns than more traditional asset classes. The panelists discuss structured securities, convertible bonds, mortgage backed securities, and other investment vehicles.

Description: From a session at the Spring regional meeting of the Society of Actuaries held in Atlanta, Georgia, May 24-25, 1999 Panelists discuss the process of selecting outside investment managers.

Description: This session from the 1995 SOA Boston Meeting reviews one and five year returns in the stock and bond markets, fund expenses for retail funds versus insurance dedicated funds, revenue sharing arrangements between mutual funds and insurance companies, the suitability of a variable annuity, recent developments with the SEC and NASD and how arrangements are structured between insurance companies and investment companies. From the Record of the Society of Actuaries, Vol. 21, No. 4b.

Description: This teaching session will examine option-pricing techniques, binomial models, lattice, the hedge portfolio and considerations and reasons for discounting at the short-term rate. It will also include biased probabilities, option-adjusted duration and convexity option-adjusted spread. From the Record of the Society of Actuaries, Vol. 21, No. 1.

Description: This guide lists literature sources that an actuary can use to gain knowledge on investments and asset/liability management. It can be viewed as a preliminary road map for the actuary seeking direction to enhance his or her knowledge in these areas. The emphasis of this guide is on fixed-income securities.

Description: This paper shows that the Esscher transform is an efficient technique for valuing derivative securities if the logarithms of the prices of the primitive securities are governed by certain stochastic processes with stationary and independent increments. From the Transactions of Society of Actuaries 1994, Vol. 46.

Description: In this paper, the relationship of convexity to the assumption of parallel shifts is explored, and new convexity measures are developed to reflect nonparallel shifts. These new measures can differ dramatically from the traditional values, providing insight into when convexity does not have to be good and when it does.

Description: Discusses asset and liability modeling for collateralized mortgage obligations [CMOs]. Assumes knowledge from previous Session 3. Session 8 of the 1991 Valuation Actuary Symposium.

Description: This session 10 of the 1990 Valuation Actuary Symposium is a panel discussion on collateralized mortgage obligations and other asset projections.

Description: The optimal degree of integration and/or coordination of these two functions is examined by presentation of diverse opinions and actual experiences. From the 1988 Record of Society of Actuaries, Vol. 14, No. 3.

Description: Panelists discuss issues faced by the insurance-company portfolio manager, how to measure or value interest-rate risk, some of the new cash investment vehicles available, the futures and options market, construction of a synthetic security, and the review of mortgage-backed securities under new analytical techniques. From the 1987 Record of Society of Actuaries, Vol. 13, No. 3.

Description: Presented at June 1986 Spring Meeting. This session discusses current trends in state regulation of insurance company investments.

Description: Presented at May 1985 Spring Meeting. This session discussed: Capital gains and losses accounting, Internal sales of investments among portfolios, Equity investment accounting, Internal stripping of securities, Internally manufactured puts and calls, Allocation of taxes and investment expenses among portfolios, Accounting systems needed.

Description: This session from the 1984 SOA New York City Meeting covers new fixed income investments and traditional investments and investments suitable for pension and savings funds. Discussions include investments such as mortgage-backed securities, financial futures, stripped treasuries, covered calls, discount bonds and junk bonds. From Record of the Society of Actuaries Vol. 10, No. 3

Description: This session from the 1984 SOA New York City Meeting discusses various investment risks, monitoring investment performance compared to objectives, measuring investment performance of GIC's, cash flow forecasting and investment programs and objectives. From Record of the Society of Actuaries Vol. 10, No. 3

Description: This presentation from the 1983 SOA Vancouver Meeting covers the actuaries' role in matching assets and liabilities, hedging, disintermediation risk and determining the appropriate level of surplus, the future of products with market value cash out adjustments and indexation in the construction of long term debt instruments. From Record of Society Of Actuaries Vol. 9. No. 3

Description: This discussion is on asset management for an insurance company, including issues of varying investment strategies for different product lines through various asset segmentation approaches, management of the assets supporting surplus, and asset/liability risk management considerations

Description: This panel discussion session focuses on pension investments including performance measurement, cash flow projections, and investment policy statements.

Description: This panel discussion presented at the April 1976 SOA meeting in Washington D.C. presents opinions and information related to investment policy in a changing economy.

Description: Reviews book entitled An Introduction to Risk and Return from Common Stocks by Richard Brealey. The book provides a description of the stock market, as seen through the eyes of the statistician.