Description: This paper presents multiple book reviews: Reports from Staff of U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Ways and Means and U.S. Senate Committee on Finance, Reports in Connection with Social Security Legislation 1975-77, 'Statement on Cost Comparisons of Individual Life Insurance Policies', by Canadian Institute of Actuaries, 'Investment Activities of Life Insurance Companies' from Huebner Foundation Lectures, 'The Life Insurance Industry's Marketing Dilemma' by Johns, 'The Future of Social Security' by Munnell, 'Social Security - Today and Tomorrow' by Ball, 'Mortality Table Construction' by Batten, 'Mortality Table Construction' by Batten, 'The Crisis in Social Security - Problems and Prospects' by Boskin, 'A History of Interest Rates' by Homer, 'Indexation of Pensions and Other Benefits' by Robert Myers, 'Life Insurance Accounting' by Strain, '1978 Annual Report of the Board of Trustees of the Federal Hospital Insurance Trust Fund...' by US Congress. Brief summaries of additional readings are also included.

Description: A summary of a preliminary report from the Committee on Valuation and Related Problems, on guidelines for quantifying balance sheet items in an insurance enterprise.

Description: Presented at April 1985 Spring Meeting. Discusses: Futures, Options, Floating rate securities, Oil and Gas, Real Estate, Leased equipment, Joint ventures, Stripped securities, Zero coupon bonds, Mortgage pools, Sales - leasebacks.

Description: Presented at May 1996 Spring Meeting. Financial management issues faced by actuaries in multinational corporations are discussed, including: GAAP and Statutory accounting, taxes, reinsurance.

Description: Summary of the health section council’s research project to assess the accuracy of commonly used IBNR estimation methods over a wide range of scenarios.

Description: From a session at the 2000 Valuation Actuary Symposium held in Washington DC, September 14-15, 2000 Discussion of financial modeling considerations including: • Model platforms • Model structure • Static and dynamic model validation techniques • Data integrity

Description: The actuarial profession is faced with a problem of determining delta-ized reserves on a basis which will include appropriate provision for adverse deviations in mortality, lapses, interest rates, and expense rates. This paper describes briefly a method which could be used to solve this Followed by papers submitted by 2 authors problem in a flexible manner.

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

Description: This article analyzes two common interpretations of SOP 03-1 in determining the guaranteed minimum death benefit GMDB liability in a variable annuity contract, and it analyzes the resulting impact on the initial GMDB reserve and on the volatility of GAAP earnings as actual experience emerges. This analysis could be applied to the guaranteed minimum income benefit GMIB, guaranteed minimum accumulation benefit GMAB, guaranteed minimum withdrawal benefit GMWB and other guaranteed benefits in a variable annuity contract that are subject to SOP 03-1, and the conclusions would be similar.

Description: A discussion of alternative meanings to “Best” in best estimate. When one is trying to estimate a result that is normally distributed, the mean, median and mode will all equal one another. However if the results are not normally distributed, different variance metrics will result in different “best” estimates. When different parts of a financial statement use different criteria for measuring best estimates and different processes for handling variances, the results can be volatile, unpredictable and perhaps unreasonable.