Description: The Federal funds rate increased by 4.25% in 2022 with further increases in 2023, which have already resulted in a liquidity crisis for a few banks. As the rapid increase of the interest rates pushed the new money rates above the yields of many life insurers’ investment portfolios, insurance companies are facing a dilemma between compressed margins from peer pressure and the concern with liquidity shortfalls and realized capital losses should mass surrenders happen. This paper discussed main emerging risks under rising interest rate environment, and several ways to mitigate these risks.

Description: The paper demonstrates that the most popular rationalization for evolving glide paths is flawed and should be discarded. The paper also demonstrates that glide paths should generally evolve for investors that endeavor to optimize outcomes and reevaluate their portfolios regularly.

Description: The management of the investments of an insurance enterprise has undergone a considerable evolution since the pioneering work of Redington in the mid 20th century. Best practices have evolved to incorporate ever more complex insurance liabilities, expanding investment asset classes and global market opportunities. Strategic asset allocation (SAA), liability driven investing, and other robust optimization approaches form the core of the professional management of insurance company investments.

Description: Constant Proportion Portfolio Insurance (CPPI) performance is assessed on realistic assumptions and dynamic strategies to mitigate the so-called ”gap risk”.

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: How assumptions like market returns and variable like saving rate should be incorporated into sound financial planning. How to analyze retirement readiness.

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

Description: Investment Fallacies: Mathematical modeling of social phenomena

Description: Investment Fallacies: The Myth of Time Diversification

Description: Readers are given an introduction to a PBA Implementation Guide for Life Products.

Description: Feature article describing the events of the Valuation Actuary Symposium in Indianapolis, In.

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: Interview with investment actuary Carl Hess, head of Towers Watson global investment practice, on his background and career path.

Description: An overview of the articles in the August 2012 issue of Risk Management and a list of winners of the most recent call for papers, “Risk Metrics for Decision Making and ORSA.”

Description: Risk management and capital budgeting are two critical components of the corporate decision process. They often need to be considered jointly at the corporate level because of their natural interaction through the dependent risk exposures and other synergetic relationships within an intricate corporate structure in a dynamic business environment. . This paper develops an integrated framework that aligns these two important corporate strategies across business divisions to optimize the streamlined enterprise strategic goal in a multi-period setting. The proposed integrated framework can serve as a practical guideline for corporate executives to optimally coordinate capital budgeting and risk management at the enterprise level.

Description: Volatility managed funds, which focus the measurement of an investor’s risk appetite on the volatility of the portfolio, have grown popular in the Asian markets recently, particularly in Japan. This article discusses a typical volatility managed strategy and presents performance comparisons between volatility managed funds and other comparable market strategies. The advantages of target volatility managed funds to investors and insurers are also included.

Description: Guaranteed Annuity Options GAOs are options available to holders of certain pension policies. This paper studies GAOs using two models for the interest rate the Vasicek and the Cox-Ingersoll-Ross models. An actuarial approach is used to value the GAOs and compared with the value of a replicating portfolio.

Description: This paper demonstrates that using a conditional probability approach to analyzing investment data yields investment forecast and stock option pricing models which more closely match actual market data, and it demonstrates the impact that conditional probabilities could have on CAPM beta and risk premia calculations. Reprinted from: Journal of Financial and Economic Practice, Vol. 6 No. 2 Spring 2006.

Description: Much of the push for ERM has come from regulators and rating agencies, but it is being applied in internal company decision-making as well. This paper reviews the progress made and the needs still outstanding in two key areas of application: optimal capital level for an insurer and risk-adjusted profitability of business units. The basic conclusion is that progress has been made in these areas, but more is needed. Building models is not emphasized—it will be assumed that a state-of-the art model is available. The emphasis is on using such models in decision-making.

Description: This paper illustrates the application of stochastic control methods in managing the risk associated with an insurance business. We present the Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman HJB equation and demonstrate its use in finding the optimal investment strategy based on some given criteria. Here we consider an insurance business with a fixed amount available for investment in a portfolio consisting of one non-risky asset and one risky asset. The object of the resulting control problem is to determine the investment strategy that minimizes infinite time ruin probability. The existence of a solution to the resulting HJB equation is shown. The relevant verification lemma is not presented in this paper and a numerical algorithm is given instead. Examples applied to exponential claims are also presented.

Description: Securitization of mortality risks is an alternative risk management tool that may have some advantages over reinsurance. The purpose of this paper is to study mortality-based securities, such as swaps and mortality bonds, and to price the proposed mortality securities. We focus on group life annuity data, although the techniques could be applied to other lines of annuity or life insurance.

Description: This teaching session covers primarily hedging strategies, including mechanisms, assumptions, and simulation. Hedging used for guaranteed living benefits on variable annuities is frequently discussed. Session 7TS of the 2005 Valuation Actuary Symposium.

Description: In this paper, we consider the relationship between salary growth, stock and long bond returns. We use this to suggest that equities may have a role in hedging final salary-related benefits. Simulations from the empirical distribution for salaries, equities and interest rates are used to demonstrate the quantile hedge.

Description: From a session at the annual meeting of the Society of Actuaries held in Chicago, Illinois, October 15-18, 2000 Discussion of purposes and approaches for creating interest-rate scenarios.

Description: From a session at the 2000 Valuation Actuary Symposium held in Washington DC, September 14-15, 2000 Discussion of newer and more innovative investment structures and the modeling of these securities in cash-flowing testing and asset/liabilities management analysis.

Description: Presented at October 1996 Annual Meeting. This session explores both conceptual and practical considerations involved with the formulation and implementation of investment strategy: decision-making framework and processes, measurement of risk and reward, constraints, modeling.

Description: This paper establishes the need for home equity conversion schemes for the elderly. It then provides a review of literature pertinent to reverse mortgages paying particular attention to the different types of reverse mortgages and their associated risks. In an attempt to better quantify the general appreciation risk faced by financial institutions issuing reverse mortgages, ARIMA techniques are employed to model Canadian house prices in both current and real dollar terms.

Description: This paper suggests a possible flexible solution to the time and resource problems of running a large number of stochastic interest rate scenarios, by selecting a representative subset. Each interest rate scenario consists of 30 future spot yield curves, where a reasonable number of points are specified on each curve such as 12. The distribution of the scenarios is approximated by the subset and each scenario in the subset has equal weight. The method is independent of the interest rate generator used.

Description: This session from the 1995 SOA Boston Meeting discusses the development of an investment strategy for a single premium deferred annuity product including liability modeling, risk measurement and management and product features. From the Record of the Society of Actuaries, Vol. 21, No. 4a.

Description: In this paper we discuss the link between the price of a contingent claim and its replicating strategies. We compute the replicating strategies for some contingent claims when the price of stocks are modeled using either the Wiener process or the Poisson process. These replicating strategies are essential knowledge if one wishes to implement a dynamic trading strategy.

Description: 1992 SOA Annual Meeting, Washington, D.C. This session addressed the asset valuation reserve, the interest maintenance reserve, the RBC requirements, and the impact on the company's investment strategies of these reserves.

Description: 1992 SOA Annual Meeting, Washington, D.C. This session on cash-flow testing for product actuaries covered the following topics: 1. Guidance notes designed to help in writing up reports on cash-flow testing. 2. Investment strategies in product design. 3. Surplus requirements.

Description: This presentation is a concurrent session from the 1991 Meeting of the Society of Actuaries, held May 16-17 in New York. The panelists discuss determining an optimal investment strategy in the current economic environment, taking into account prospects for the future, and how investment decisions are affected by product features. Discussion from participants is included. From the Record of Society of Actuaries, Volume 17, No. 2.

Description: This presentation is a concurrent session from the 1991 Meeting of the Society of Actuaries, held April 18-19 in New Orleans. The panelists discuss determining an optimal investment strategy in the current economic environment, taking into account prospects for the future, and how investment decisions are affected by product features. From the Record of Society of Actuaries, Volume 17, No. 1.

Description: Panelists discuss: [1] a way to study interest-rate risk using stochastic methods, [2] a conceptual framework needed to evaluate the suitability of an investment strategy for insurance liabilities, and [3] how one company [Capital Holding] develops investment strategies and asset/liability management policies. From the 1988 Record of Society of Actuaries, Vol. 14, No. 2.

Description: Presented at May 1986 Spring Meeting. This session discussion is about techniques companies are using to maintain compatibility between investment practices and pricing assumptions for interest-sensitive products: Segregated assets, Use of options/futures, Asset/liability matching, Market value adjustments.

Description: Presented at May 1985 Spring Meeting. This session discussed: How investment policy should be developed, Role of the actuary and the investment officer, Role of the pricing actuary and the valuation actuary, Liquidity considerations, Tax considerations, Capital loss constraints, Process for changing strategy as the economy and company circumstances change.

Description: From the 1985 Valuation Actuary Symposium Discussion of techniques for determining capital requirements needed to support an insurance business, based on the nature of the assets and liabilities on the books and related investment strategies, using ALM modeling

Description: This session from the 1983 SOA Hollywood, Florida Meeting discusses investment strategy, new investment instruments, investment strategy for flexible cash value policies, investment strategy for traditional policies and an example of investment strategy for a SPDA. Record of Society of Actuaries Vol. 9, No. 4

Description: This panel discussion looked at investment philosophy and strategy for insurance companies. Discussion focused on the matching of assets and liabilities, the effect of an inflationary environment, and performance measurement for investment results.

Description: Digests of following discussions: 1. Mutual life insurance companies - their objectives and operating philosophy 2. State, provincial, and municipal employee pension plans - financing and other problems 3. Mortality and underwriting of individual policies for large amounts 4. Investing during the 1970's 5. Long-range viability and regulation of corporate pension plans 6. Forecasting the environment for business 7. Liabilities and surplus in the 1970's 8. Changing modes of family life - work and income over the life cycle 9. The role of the actuary in collective bargaining 10. Health insurance in the United States 11. Adjusted earnings