Description: The implementation of the IFRS 17 insurance accounting standard has brought significant changes to the financial reporting landscape of insurance companies. With new disclosure requirements and altered profit analysis, understanding and interpreting future profitability have become a topic of concern for the industry. While stability remains a key objective for insurance companies, the earning patterns might become more volatile especially when the contractual service margin (CSM) is exhausted, and a loss component (LC) needs to be established. Reinsurance, a common risk mitigation tool, can play a pivotal role in managing earnings volatility and minimizing losses for onerous measurement units. In this article, we propose a new key performance indicator (KPI) called “loss recoverability” to assess the performance of reinsurance treaties in achieving these objectives. We explain how this KPI can be utilized in multiple scenarios to evaluate the effectiveness of reinsurance strategies and pursue stability in earning patterns.

Description: As an addendum to a July 2022 article, this article restates the formulas then presented for a framework to measure the reinsured portion of a direct loss from capping a net premium ratio or flooring a liability. The article corrects a flaw in one of the original formulas and shows, by example, how the framework can be applied to a specific application of reinsurance accounting.

Description: IFRS 17 will be effective as of 1 Jan 2023 and provide opportunities as well as challenges to both Direct Writers and Reinsurers across the insurance industry. If the new framework is not fully understood, an implementation can elevate the risk of problems in financial reporting, product development, investment management and more. The transition to IFRS provides an opportunity for companies to optimize the financial position of the enterprise by implementing mitigating strategies to reduce the risks and challenges that IFRS brings to the table.

Description: Adjusted earnings has long been a fundamental KPI for investors to assess the core financial performance of a company. As a non-GAAP measure, there is a divergence in practice of how individual companies define adjusted earnings and what activities management views as “core” to their business. The arrival of US GAAP LDTI has led insurers to revisit their existing adjusted earnings framework as the new standard introduces additional “accounting noise” that if left unadjusted obscures the true underlying drivers of performance. This article provides key insights on the influence US GAAP LDTI has had to the adjusted earnings calculation, highlights changes from the pre-LDTI framework, and showcases key themes observed from public insurers 2023Q1 10-Q filings.

Description: Long-duration targeted improvements (LDTI) will have unique consequences for long-term care and disability income. Discuss how to address these issues and learn more aboutboth standalone and combination LTC contracts. Understand the impact of LDTI on DAC, policies which previously held zero active life reserves, and allocation of IBNR to cohorts. By attending the session, you will: - Be able to create and defend accounting policies and to implement actuarial models consistent with the new U.S. GAAP accounting rules.

Description: The landscape of climate-related and sustainability-related disclosures has been changing and evolving. The approaches that companies will use under the new ISSB standards (IFRS - IFRS S1, IFRS - IFRS S2) remains to be seen. To help prepare for these standards taking effect, the SOA Research Institute Catastrophe & Climate Strategic Research Program Steering Committee is seeking researchers to conduct a literature search to lay out methodologies and approaches being considered to implement these new standards, along with common terminology and common language determination in the approaches.

Description: The Society of Actuaries Research Institute’s Committee on Finance Research (CFR) and Investment Section are seeking researchers to produce a primer that compares regulatory approaches for actuarially related investment aspects of the banking and insurance industries in North America. The underlying motivation for this effort is to educate actuaries on these issues and provide a useful resource for learning more about how these industries compare in this regard.

Description: Overview of regulations and best practices for governance of PBR valuation processes, including standards, oversight, controls and review related to the PBR analysis

Description: Interest Maintenance Reserve ("IMR") has become a hot topic recently due to rising interest rates, causing decreases or even negative IMR balances for some insurers. This article aims to exam some new questions facing financial reporting actuaries: - How should negative IMR be treated for statutory reporting? - What are the other actuarial implications of negative IMR? - What have regulators done and/or plan to do about negative IMR? - What are potential mitigants?

Description: In this article, we collected data from the companies’ roll-forward disclosures related to calendar years 2021 and 2022 on Market Risk Benefit and shared a high-level summary of the Market Risk Benefit volatility that a focus group of companies incurred and summarized the most common ways to mitigate volatility.