Description: This presentation is a panel discussion, session 54PD, from the 2004 Spring Meeting of the Society of Actuaries, held June 14-15 in San Antonio, TX. This session covers the impact of segmentation and underwriting on expected mortality and morbidity. Panelists discuss the importance of data mining and customer selection on ultimate experience, setting up direct marketing applications with the right type of questions to maximize responses but limit risk, the use of prescription drugs and other databases, and industry practices for obtaining customer information. Discussion from participants is included. From the Record of Society of Actuaries, Volume 30, No. 2.

Description: Is your development team or IT staff growing tired of last-minute requests to include additional functionality? Have you strained to explain challenging actuarial topics to non-actuarial staff for implementation? Do your teams find themselves revisiting deadlines & timelines when building solutions? During this interactive panel discussion, three technologists (two software engineering managers and one data scientist) along with three actuaries will discuss real world problems and approaches using experience from previous projects. Although the challenge of running efficient software teams is not unique to actuarial science, this webcast will discuss best practices on how to organize teams to reduce friction and context switching. Presenters will also explore unique actuarial challenges and concepts including how to address standards on data quality when building software, how to build intuitive software that meets actuarial standards and how test-driven development makes it easier to meet actuarial standards of practice.

Description: To better understand the product development process and practices currently used at insurance companies, the Society of Actuaries Marketing and Distribution Section Council initiated a Product Development Survey in the summer of 2006. The goal of the survey was to identify company practices for product development by asking individuals with product implementation responsibilities about the process followed at their companies. For this survey, the “product development process” was viewed holistically – encompassing everything from how ideas are generated through to how products are monitored post-launch. Also, all aspects of the product development process were considered – marketing, actuarial, underwriting, finance, customer service, IT, legal/compliance, etc.