Description: The United States has received severe negative press the last several years regarding its massive U.S. federal government debt, currently estimated as of April 2007 at about $8.9 trillion. This article looks at the U.S. debt relative to other countries and also explores the impact on U.S. investments.

Description: Just as the U.S. is dealing with a new surge of COVID-19 hospitalizations and death, the pandemic’s impact on the nation’s mortality rate is generating heightened interest. Two new reports issued from the Society of Actuaries provide important insights.

Description: The Regulation and Taxation (Hong Kong version) e-Course gives you an overview of the regulatory environment of life and annuity insurance in Hong Kong, U.S. and Canada, with a special emphasis on how it impacts actuaries. You'll learn which government agencies regulate insurance and annuity products and why.

Description: Mortality is a fundamental element in the financial projections of the finances of social security programs around the world. Prominent actuaries from the U.S. Social Security Administration, Canada's Office of Superintendent of Financial Institutions and the U.K. Government Actuary's Department will discuss some of the key factors and current issues associated with these projections. Improving mortality has and will have a significant effect on the affordability and importance of income through retirement to many population segments in these countries.

Description: GDP growth has slowed as numerous headwinds have emerged. This article summarizes a research paper by Mark Alberts and Max Rudolph that addresses reasons why this is so and how risk managers can address using scenarios.

Description: The National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) has developed the Group Capital Calculation (GCC) for U.S.-based insurance groups since late 2015. GCC is designed to provide a coherent analytical framework to show a panoramic, transparent view of the interconnectedness, business activities and underlying capital support for an insurance group. The last field testing was completed in May 2019. The final proposal was adopted in late 2020. The Federal Reserve Board (FSB) also recently updated the group capital standard to an aggregation method, which is similar to the NAIC GCC. The Insurance Capital Standard (ICS) is under the development by International Association of Insurance Supervisors (IAIS) for Internationally Active Insurance Groups (IAIGs). It has entered the five-monitoring period from January 2020 to monitor the performance of the ICS V2.0 and the IAIS will perform a comparability assessment of the ICS V2.0 with the Aggregation Method (e.g. NAIC GCC) during this period.

Description: "Driving Longevity Through Educational Attainment – Robert L. Brown – Ph. D. Higher Age U.S. Mortality By Education and Cause of Death Trends, Inequality and Controllable Risk Factors – Andrew J. G. Cairns – MPA Ph.D., Maxwell Institute for Mathematical Sciences, and Department of Actuarial Mathematics and Statistics, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK, Cristian Redondo Lour´es, Ph.D., Actuarial Solutions,"

Description: Read this Chairperson's Corner for the March 2024 issue of International News to learn more about planned meetings and upcoming events.

Description: This article is an introduction to the topic of mortality projections and their impact on social security systems. The article reviews two life expectancy graphs and overall trends in life expectancy by gender at birth and age 65 in the United States, Canada and the UK.

Description: In this third issue of International News in 2022, we feature a contribution by SCOR, a leading reinsurer, highlighting the Actuarial Awards that SCOR presents annually, since 1996, to the best academic work in actuarial science, with annual prizes in several countries throughout the world. We also feature an article by Jessica Leong, FCAS, on barriers that Asian women must overcome to become leaders. Jessica recounts her own experience and how in overcoming some challenges she became the first Asian president of the Casualty Actuarial Society.