Description: A discussion of how the tax law changes of 2003 might affect the attractiveness of variable annuity business relative to mutual funds and direct investments in dividend paying equities.

Description: The article considers how actuaries have responded to long term changes in the past and considers how to deal with two changes ion the future: pension provision when bond yields are low and long term care.

Description: Structured-note annuities provide a retirement solution for the masses while allowing effective hedging and balance sheet usage for the insurance complex.

Description: This article describes how different types of regression models used for fund modeling can affect the variable annuity's risk exposure report and attribution report.

Description: This paper explores a proposed compulsory savings program combined with transparent investment vehicles designed to promote competition based on expense levels, fund performance and customer service. At retirement 50% of the account is annuitized in Participating Variable Annuity (PVA) backed by TIPS. All investment experience, expenses, and pooled longevity experience is passed to annuitants through periodic benefit adjustments. Annuities are priced uniformly based on age at commencement.

Description: A discussion of the effective dates and statutory reserves cap for variable annuities under Actuarial Guideline 43.

Description: Examination of full surrender and benefit utilization industry experience for Variable Annuities with and without Guaranteed Lifetime Withdrawal Benefits. Part 1 of 3 articles focuses on full surrenders and building a dynamic surrender function using predictive modeling tools.

Description: Current risk management approaches for variable annuity business are not working very well in today's market turmoil.

Description: Life and annuity markets around the world have seen increasingly complex investment-combined products, including universal life, fixed indexed annuities, variable annuities with a wide variety of guaranteed benefits, indexed variable annuities, etc. Insurance companies are facing unprecedented exposure to financial risks in addition to traditional mortality and longevity risks. The risk assessment and modeling for such complex designs by conventional methods often focus heavily on their market competitiveness and profitability. However, there seems to be a lack of quantifiable and systematic approach to assess investment risks associated with investment combined products. The objective of the proposed work is to develop a framework for quantifying and analyzing various forms of contractual designs and showcase different techniques to assess the trade-off between competitive contractual designs and their practical implications with regard to the difficulty of risk management.