Description: The author explains how he used judgmental forecasting techniques to develop a dynamic lapse assumption. He defines the techniques and provides readers with a step-by-step process.

Description: Regression to the mean is a phenomenon that arises when comparing sequential data points. It states that when an initial observation is extreme or an outlier, future observations will be closer to the average. Health care actuaries need to understand and be able to mitigate the effects of regression to the mean to avoid misapplying predictive models or misstating measurements of historical effects.

Description: This article provides a brief introduction to forecasting methods that are potentially relevant to actuarial work.

Description: The financing for Social Security is a pay-as-you-go system, rather than the full-reserve system utilized in private insurance, and the financing conditions of the trust funds have more uncertainty than does the reserve in private insurance. Traditionally, the financing conditions have been decided by a deterministic approach using economic and demographic assumptions that rely upon negotiation among experts at various government agencies. This paper proposes an econometric approach, called the 'co-integrated multivariate time series model,' for forecasting the financing conditions of the trust funds. This stochastic approach not only establishes the interrelationships but also clarifies the co-movements among the economic assumptions. Furthermore, it helps analyze the original assumptions rather than the differences of the nonstationary assumption variables adopted by researchers in the past that are more difficult to interpret. Use of this approach permits the assessment of the probability distribution of the future balance of trust funds instead of assessing estimates from the three alternative deterministic assumptions. This distribution will provide policy-makers with a better assessment of stability of the trust funds.

Description: Given the ubiquity of judgmental forecasting, it is important to understand the potential biases inherent in human judgment—the traps that can snare us—and to learn methods and best practices to avoid them. The aim of this article is to help readers with these goals.

Description: Presented at May 2002 Spring Meeting. Our lecturer presents findings from a research project relating to the Cox, Ingersoll & Ross model of interest rates, including an effective way of pricing general interest rate derivatives and pricing bonds.

Description: Presented at Living to 100 Symposium, January 2011. This study adapts the idea of regular discount sequence in the bandit problem, and uses it to interpret life expectancy, as well as to develop a model for survival probabilities. Data came from multiple countries.

Description: This paper introduces the modern concepts and definitions of the statistical subject of life testing, and ties them in with corresponding concepts of actuarial science. This paper additionally presents a justification of some common laws of mortality. Discussions of the paper are included.

Description: As the portion of inforce business valued under PBR grows, it becomes increasingly important to not only calculate reserves for point-in-time valuation but to also project reserves. This is especially critical for actuarial functions such as pricing, business strategy/forecasting, and asset adequacy testing. In this session, we will review PBR projection techniques based on work completed by the American Academy of Actuaries when developing the PBA Projection Practice Note. In addition, this session will examine specific challenges that can arise when actuaries use models to project reserves at future dates. Topics covered include mortality improvement, credibility, scenario generation, starting asset projections, and various other technical issues related to nested modeling requiring both inner and outer loop projections.

Description: In Medicaid rate development, actuaries have not historically shared models that developed the margin (i.e., underwriting gain) assumption. This is unfortunate, given the margin assumption is one of the most critical components of the rate development in ensuring financial solvency of the Medicaid managed care organizations (MCOs). In this session, we will discuss the primary components of the this assumption and will share working models that help actuaries quantify these components—including the cost of capital and risk (or contingency) margin. We expect a lively discussion as we “open the black box” and discuss these actuarial assumptions in the public for the first time.