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 SOA is pleased to make available a report updating the 2012 risk assessment performed by Porteous et al. The report also provided an economic capital analysis for a stylized US plan with the same member profile and the USS provisions modified to reflect a typical US DB plan.

Description: This report introduces actuaries and risk managers in the insurance and pension industries to current literature discussing growth rates in the past and future expectations.

Description: Derives appropriate hedge ratios for CPPI strategies, taking into account discrete hedge times and market dislocations (gap risk).

Description: Article introducing a new department in the newsletter by the section's SOA staff partner.

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 discussing guidelines for adopting ORSA.

Description: The Committee on Finance Research is pleased to make available a research report summarizing the results of a survey exploring market risk practices at insurance companies.

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: Research report describing the results of an Emerging Risks Survey conducted in 2010. This survey attempts to track the thoughts of risk managers about emerging risks across time. The new top five are: 1. Fall in value of US Dollar. 2. International terrorism. 3. Chinese economic hard landing. 4. Oil price shock. 5. Failed and failing states.

Description: This paper investigates the optimal multi-period proportional reinsurance strategy that minimizes the ruin probability of an insurer. Some conditions under which it is optimal to have no reinsurance are derived. Based on these results, a new concept, capital threshold of proportional reinsurance, is introduced. In the case of two periods, a lower bound of the capital threshold of proportional reinsurance is provided. Some economic implications and properties of this new concept are also discussed.

Description: This article examines how parameter uncertainty leads to uncertainty in Value at Risk VaR estimates. Lacking a closed form solution, we use a first order approximation of VaR to map parameter changes into changes in the VaR value. When the asymptotic distribution of parameter estimates is normal, this implies a normal approximation of the confidence interval about VaR. We describe this approximation in detail and explore some extensions to risk factor modeling.

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: This survey of emerging risks attempts to track the risk manager population‘s thoughts about emerging risks across time. The top 4 emerging risks from this third iteration of the survey are: 1. US current account deficit/fall in US dollar. 2. Blow up in asset prices/excessive indebtedness. 3. Oil price shock/energy supply interruptions. 4. Chinese economic hard landing.

Description: This is a concluding and encompassing part of our research on the project entitled \Weighted Premium Calculation Principles and Risk Capital Allocations, which has been supported by the Actuarial Education and Research Fund AERF and the Society of Actuaries Committee on Knowledge Extension Research CKER. We explore the concept of weighted distributions and their role in various phenomena occurring in insurance and finance. In particular, we relate weighted distributions to actuarial and economic premium calculation principles, and also to the capital asset pricing model CAPM. Imitating the latter, we propose a weighted insurance pricing model WIPM. Although general in formulation, we show that the WIPM can successfully be evaluated in a variety of situations, which we illustrate with a number of examples.

Description: This paper develops credibility using a longitudinal data framework. In a longitudinal data framework, one might encounter data from a cross-section of risk classes towns with a history of insurance claims available for each risk class. For the marginal claims distributions, we use generalized linear models, an extension of linear regression that also encompasses Weibull and Gamma regressions. Copulas are used to model the dependencies over time specifically, this paper is the first to propose using a t-copula in the context of generalized linear models. The t-copula is the copula associated with the multivariate t-distribution like univariate t-distributions, it seems especially suitable for empirical work. Moreover, we show that the t-copula gives rise to easily computable predictive distributions that we use to generate credibility predictors. Like Bayesian methods, our copula credibility prediction methods allow us to provide an entire distribution of predicted claims, not just a point prediction.

Description: Presented at May 2005 Spring Meeting. This session examines financial, economic and traditional actuarial methodological approaches used for solving investment-risk problems.

Description: From a session at the Spring meeting of the Society of Actuaries held in San Antonio, Texas, June 14-15, 2004 The panelists discuss the benefits of hedging variable annuity guarantees, the challenges they face and how they keep score.

Description: From a session at the Spring meeting of the Society of Actuaries held in San Antonio, Texas, June 14-15, 2004 This session discusses emerging capital and reserve requirements on Variable annuities with guaranteed benefits and the effect that hedging/capital management strategies can have.

Description: From a session at the Spring meeting of the Society of Actuaries held in San Antonio, Texas, June 14-15, 2004 This session covers different methods for estimating future volatility of financial markets, how to predict the effect of volatility on insurance company results, alternative approaches to managing volatility and the impact on volatility management on the choice of modeling method.

Description: From a session at the Spring meeting of the Society of Actuaries held in San Antonio, Texas, June 14-15, 2004 Speakers discuss the approaches to quantifying investment risk, including the credit risk subcomponent and mismatch risk sub-component in the three different types of risk-based capital RBC framework commonly used, such as regulatory, rating agency and company-specific economic-based formulas.

Description: Measurement of the Volatility Risk of Traditional Actuarial Risks for use in pricing and reserving

Description: 2001 SOA Spring Meeting, Toronto. A wide range of tools exists in both the insurance and banking industries to measure and mitigate exposure to risk. For some risks, given their nature and volatility, real-time measurement and monitoring has become a necessity. This session focused on the risk management tools and techniques that measure and mitigate exposure associated with products that have embedded options.

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 a meeting of the Society of Actuaries held in San Diego, CA, June 22-23, 2000 Panel discussion of the work being done by the Society of Actuaries and the NAIC to further development of a Unified Valuation System.

Description: From a session at the Spring regional meeting of the Society of Actuaries held in Atlanta, Georgia, May 24-25, 1999 Panelists discussed a comprehensive risk management approach to quantify the risk exposure from various sources.

Description: Panelists at this session of the SOA 1998 Maui I Spring Meeting presents their approach to an integrated risk management framework that assesses the level of risk in the organization and where it lies on the balance sheet.

Description: Report presenting a detailed description of how the actuary can analyze C-3 risk, using asset-liability analysis.

Description: Panelists discuss: [1] investment quality as a dynamic investment consideration, [2] the impact of securitization on investment quality, [3] measuring default risk, and [4] the interrelationship between C-1 risk and C-3 risk. From the 1988 Record of Society of Actuaries, Vol. 14, No. 4A.

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: Committee members discuss the objectives of COVARA, areas of current research, summary of findings about C-1 Risk, C-2 Risk, C-3 Risk, and Combination of Risks, and future areas of committee interest. From the 1987 Record of Society of Actuaries, Vol. 13, No. 4B.

Description: Presented at June 1985 Spring Meeting. Panelists shared actual experiences and practical techniques used in assessing the degree of match or mismatch between assets and liabilities for life insurance companies.

Description: This session from the 1983 SOA Hollywood, Florida Meeting reviews progress reports by the Committee on Valuation and Related Problems. It discusses statutory surplus, the contingency surplus needed for C-1, C-2, C-3 Risks, C-4 Risk and vitality surplus. From Record of Society of Actuaries, Vol. 9, No. 4.

Description: Panel discussion focused on the Effective Use of Capital. Topics included: 1. Definition of capital 2. Appropriate level of capital and surplus in a life insurance company 3. Alternatives for deploying capital 4. Returns a life company should demand on invested capital 5. How much a company should charge for lending its capital in reinsurance transactions

Description: Panel discussion focused on the Effective Use of Capital. Topics included: 1. Definition of capital 2. Appropriate level of capital and surplus in a life insurance company 3. Alternatives for deploying capital 4. Returns a life company should demand on invested capital 5. How much a company should charge for lending its capital in reinsurance transactions