Description: The 2020 Long-Term Care (LTC) Medical Symposium was a two-day conference that extracted the thinking of leading experts on historical and future trends that will influence LTC insurance (LTCI) claim expectations. The symposium focused on the ideas from experts outside of the LTCI industry for the explicit purpose of gathering fresh perspectives on the issues that LTCI companies face, such as expected timing of new claims onset, length of claim, life expectancy and cost of care. The 2020 symposium built on and complemented the first annual symposium held in 2018 and 2019. The focus in 2020 was on aging of the brain and how technology will impact the future of LTC caregiving. The symposium is not intended to quantify historical or future trends or to be prescriptive or specific about long-term care actuarial assumptions. Rather, the symposium aims to provide the long-term care actuary with environmental context for considering morbidity and other macro factors that may impact LTC experience in the long term.

Description: The American Academy of Actuaries will present on current initiatives that impact the U.S. statutory reserving methodology for non-variable annuity contracts. In particular, the development of a principle-based reserving framework on non-variable annuity contracts will be discussed, including framework elements, assumptions, and methodology. The session will provide an update on the status of regulatory discussions and the timeline for future changes to reserves. By the end of the session, attendees will understand what changes are being made to non-variable annuity reserves, details underlying existing proposals, and the anticipated timing of such emerging changes. This session is intended to the meet the needs of actuaries focused on annuity reserve calculations, financial reporting, and valuation.

Description: With many complex regulatory changes on the horizon as well as pressures to ensure model accuracy from auditors, regulatory requirements and new actuarial standards of practice, the importance of robust model validation is coming to the forefront of actuaries’ minds. What was previously a day-two task for many companies is becoming just as important as model development! In this session, you will hear from those that have been deeply involved in building model validation frameworks and tools in responses to regulatory changes GAAP Long Duration Targeted Improvements (“LDTI”) and Principles Based Reserves (“PBR”).

Description: VA reserve and capital reforms are effective 1/1/20 and the first year of reporting under the new framework requires several key milestones for annuity valuation actuaries to achieve. Discuss key implementation issues, including the new standard projection, optionality around hedge treatment and taxation, discuss disclosure requirements as well as the PBR report requirements. Overall focus on decisions to be taken by a valuation actuary with respect to reporting under the new framework.

Description: Hear from companies & consultants that early adopted VM-21 for year-end 2019. Learn from their experiences in preparing for the significant additional work required for implementation - updating models, assumptions, documentation, etc. Hear about the NAIC review and feedback (if available).

Description: This session will have two sections: General consideration of IFRS17 implementation for VA writers and reinsurers A case study of IFRS17 implementation for a reinsurer The first section will go over VFA and GM approaches that are available for VA writers. Both approaches have their own challenges. We will highlight some of the challenges and how to approach/overcome them. Additionally, we will discuss how hedging/ALM can help smooth the transition. The second section will go over the details of implementation process of a VA reinsurer. The case study will explore valuation challenges unique to reinsurers assuming business that would otherwise be valued under the VFA. It will also go over some of the modeling difficulties, project management, and database requirement.

Description: The optional phase-in period for life principle-based reserves (PBR) has come to a close, and companies have put in the work to bring their PBR implementations across the finish line. With the mandatory PBR implementation deadline behind them, companies can turn their attention from compliance to model and process improvements. The presenters will outline lessons learned from PBR implementations and their applications to broader use cases, as well as resources that are available for PBR modelers. Discussion topics will include items such as: Model simplifications and validation Model run-time techniques Model scalability (e.g. adding new products / future assumption updates) Sensitivity testing Model projections Available PBR & other modeling resources (e.g. PBR practice note, ASOP 56)

Description: The always popular Medicaid Hot Topics session is back with discussions from an expert panel on the most riveting Medicaid topics of the year. These could include the following: • Medicaid Fiscal Accountability Proposed Regulations• Tennessee's Block Grant Proposal• ACA court battles: What are the potential impacts on Medicaid? • Pass-through payments are converting to directed payments: What is changing?• And more current topics of interest to Medicaid actuariesMedicaid is dynamic and it is difficult to stay current on all of the changes. This session provides insightful discussion into the major changes that impact actuaries and their companies or state clients.

Description: Many new and innovative companies are leveraging technology to improve the effectiveness of the care provided to patients. They are employing better tools to identify patients who can benefit from specific programs that best meet the patient's need. They are also dramatically increasing the use of these programs by guiding plan members through the maze of offerings to match them with the programs that will be most beneficial to them. Employers are making these third party programs available to their members and Medicare Plans are using these new tools to identify emerging health risks for early intervention and more accurate risk scoring. This session will explore some examples of these programs, how they are being effectively integrated into the operations of health plans and how the results of these programs are being measured.The speakers will be:Raj Behal, MD, MPH,Chief Quality Officer, One Medical. Raj leads the quality and safety, value and innovation, and data science teams at One Medical. One Medical is changing the way primary care is delivered with a concierge approach with technology seamlessly woven into their offering. This includes booking appointments on line, virtual face to face care, accessible medical records and health reminders.Mylea Charval,Ph.D., CEO and Founder, Savonix. Savonix is a next generation cognitive assessment platform that brings clinical, evidence-based, and all mobile digital assessment of cognitive and emotional function. These capabilities are critical for early identification of the onset of dementia and for the proper risk assessment of seniors enrolled in Medicare Advantage Plans.Ed Cymerys, FSA, Advisor. Ed will serve as moderator. Over the last six years Ed has served as an advisor to a number of early stage technology companies looking to improve the way health benefits are being delivered.Dave Sotelo, FSA, MAAA, Actuarial Manager, Collective Health, Inc. Collective Health is an integrated solution that allows self-funded employers to administer their health plans, control costs, and take care of their people -- all in one place. They have effectively integrated more than 70 distinct third party solutions for self-funded employers and are rigorously assessing the impact of these programs

Description: While our ability to access and analyze large quantities of data is better than ever, many long-term products suffer from sparse data in critical risk areas, such as deep in-the-money lapse experience and long-term utilization rates for income guarantees. The presenters will explore industry-level annuity experience data for these types of situations, and discuss quantitative approaches to addressing them in pricing and other applications.

Description: There has been significant discussion of PBR for Life Insurance, but there has also been progress in development of PBR for annuities; including VM-21, VM-22, and future VM-23. The presenters will look at the progress in PBR for annuities and what the future may hold.

Description: The presenters in this classic session will explore protection and accumulation products as well discuss the current state of the hybrid Life/LTC market. They will also examine the latest trends and the challenges to innovation and highlight key factors impacting the product actuary including the impact of technology, regulation and competitive environment. 

Description: The presenters will review and discuss the recent trend of FIA and Structured Annuities new product development, illustrate the differences and similarities between these two types of products, and discuss how insurance carriers may effectively manage the capital market risk from derivative hedging perspective. Special emphases will be on (1) the performance of customized FIA indices during the recent economic cycles, relative to benchmark equity indices such as S&P 500, and (2) the latest product designs of Structured Annuities and offering rates by insurance carriers.

Description: The hybrid Life/LTC and Life / Chronic Illness market is an exciting market that is in its relative infancy. There are many new companies that have just entered, or are considering entering, the hybrid market. Hybrid sales have grown tremendously over the past decade and are still going strong, with annual premium revenue estimated to be above $4 billion per year. The young issue ages for these products, relative to when LTC benefits are paid, means that the claim experience in the industry for these products is still very limited. Additionally, there are many moving parts to these products that present correlated risks and assumptions. The new entrants to the market, limited experience, and the interactions of risks create an environment equipped for vibrant discussions on the product structure, risks, assumptions, and considerations for modeling these hybrid products. The presenters would provide insight into each of these topics through a conceptual discussion, supported by observational data from case study projections and sensitivities.

Description: Papers: Multi-Population Longevity Models: A Spatial Random Field Approach– Nhan Huynh, Mike Ludkovski, Ph.D. - University of California at Santa Barbara, Howard Zail - Elucider, LLC. The Application of Affine Processes in Cohort Mortality Risk Models – Zhiping Huang, Michael Sherris, FSA, FIAA, FIA, Andres M. Villegas Ramirez, Ph.D., Jonathan Ziveyi, Ph.D. - UNSW Australia

Description: While intended to assist health plan actuaries responsible for stress testing and ORSA filings, this session will also be informative for actuaries interested in communicating the impact of potential catastrophic events for health plans to their management and board. It will begin with a discussion of event thresholds for stress tests and their impact on capital and financial statements. Presenters will take a detailed look at several catastrophic event case studies (historical and hypothetical) in the following areas: healthcare specific (e.g. pandemic, specialty Rx), financial institution/credit market, operational/business, strategic and multi-event scenarios.</

Description: Companies exempt from PBR can benefit by borrowing ideas and lessons learned from companies that perform and operate in a PBR world. The presenters will discuss VM requirements related to governance policies, as well as assumption and margin setting, plus model validations and controls which can benefit smaller insurance companies. Attendees will learn about new actuarial practices and how the PBR methodology and Valuation Manual can influence their work and highlight available resources.

Description: Institutional investors such as pension plans and insurance companies have enjoyed strong equity returns for a length of time with few historical precedents. Nearly a decade after the end of the financial crisis, strategies to provide downside protection remain expensive and the performance of traditional risk-managed funds has disappointed investors.

Description: The session will feature case study discussion of how insurers can improve their model architecture and data visualization to prepare for the increasing demands of the future. Actuarial data and analysis has long been limited by the complexity and diversity of historical systems. External pressure on insurers is higher than ever before, as new requirements take effect under PBR, GAAP Targeted Improvements, and IFRS17.

Description: The session offers high-level initial steps to get started using R, as well as a list of helpful resources for both general data science and actuarial science with R. Attendees will learn about popular R packages to perform practical tasks such as importing, transforming and visualizing data, as well as packages commonly used by actuaries. You will also be introduced to the markdown package for creating reproducible and reusable analyses and workflows. By the end of the session, you will be familiar enough with using R and RStudio to begin incorporating these tools in your day-to-day work as an actuary

Description: The management of the investments of an insurance enterprise has undergone a considerable evolution since the pioneering work of Redington in the mid 20th century. Best practices have evolved to incorporate ever more complex insurance liabilities, expanding investment asset classes and global market opportunities. Strategic asset allocation (SAA), liability driven investing, and other robust optimization approaches form the core of the professional management of insurance company investments.

Description: Technology is transforming the retirement space and more changes are expected in the future. Join a panel of experts to discuss what are the opportunities, trends and challenges associated with new technologies in the retirement landscape and how it is expected to impact consumers, if we can enable their successful integration.

Description: Over the last few years, many direct companies have started inforce management programs and are now navigating what actions can be taken to optimize the business. At the same time, the legal, compliance, and regulatory environments are also changing. The presenters will explore the development and implementation of programs such as changing non-guaranteed elements or efforts to improve experience while considering the changing compliance environment, including New York Regulation 210, ASOP2 and litigation challenges.

Description: Digital is the main reason over half of the companies on the Fortune 500 have disappeared since 2000." (CEO Accenture). We cannot be sure how global technology megatrends will disrupt the life insurance industry, but we can be certain that the future will not look like today. As large quantities of available data are no longer owned by insurance companies and statistical techniques become more accessible to non-statisticians, the pressure to keep up with technological advancement increases. Life actuaries must think critically about and be prepared for the coming changes and position themselves as leaders in an industry lagging behind in new technology adoption.

Description: The insurance industry has a lot to learn from academia's missteps. With predictive analytics assuming an ever-expanding role in risk modeling, carriers would be well-served to establish practices that mitigate the creation of faulty models. Hear practical advice on how to mitigate the risks of overfitting, with a focus on how to translate complex policyholder behavior experience data for long-term products into behavioral models using company- and industry-level data.

Description: Near the end of a pension plan's lifespan, after benefit accruals have ceased and the plan has reached fully funded status, a plan sponsor has the option to begin the plan termination process immediately or to maintain the plan for an extended period of time (often referred to as 'hibernation' as an alternative to termination). While immediate termination appeals to some plan sponsors, others choose hibernation for a number of reasons, including paternalism, fiduciary obligations, perceived cost differentials or simple inertia.

Description: Despite the slowdown in the economy, premium growth in emerging markets fared relatively well compared to advanced insurance markets. Yet, there exists an enormous range in premium density and penetration between emerging and advanced markets. The presenters explore the demand side and attempt to lay out possible solutions to narrow the protection gap.

Description: The presenters will highlight differences in mortality that result from socioeconomic issues. Topics will include the differences in cause-specific mortality among different socioeconomic classes, trends in these gaps over time, and recommendations for reducing inequalities in life expectancy in the future.

Description: The actuarial profession is at a tipping point and a combination of disruptive technologies and external pressures are creating a unique opportunity to move from results producer to insightful adviser. For a prudent but forward-looking professional, this is exciting and scary in equal measure. The ability to process large masses of business data to make more accurate calculations has become one of the most sought-after skills for leaders across all industries, including insurance.<br><br>The presenters will introduce current data technologies used to manage, process and visualize data. They will cover solutions like Microsoft BI, Tableau, Amazon Redshift, Hadoop, Alteryx, Python, etc. and their applications in data, process improvement, automation, reporting and predictive analytics. In particular, they will explore management reporting and how it leverages data analytics to help business leaders with strategic decisions making, how to evaluate the effectiveness of management reporting structures, drivers of change and ways to improve them, and proposed steps toward entrenching this dynamic and insightful approach to management reporting in which insurance leaders can have confidence.

Description: Baseline and "what if"/stressed projections of cash flows, financial statements and capital requirements are critical inputs for a range of business purposes: forecasts, risk management, liquidity management, strategic decision making, etc. Forward-looking projections have historically been inefficient and were performed in silos, making it difficult to scale the process as CFOs and CROs ask for more. The presenters discuss challenges of the forecast process and opportunities to meet desired future capabilities. They will also discuss "what if" analysis and ways to support production of forward-looking projections for "what if" analysis in an efficient way.

Description: This session meets the needs of life insurance actuaries who are focused on experience studies, assumption setting, and/or product development. The presenters will use industry data to illustrate how policyholders react to product design, such as premium jumps in the PLT period and UL with high interest rate illustration, and trends in the life insurance market, including the introduction of smoking distinguished rates and the shift towards an increasing number of preferred underwriting classes.

Description: Predictive analytics is impacting various actuarial disciplines. During this session, we will discuss how predictive analytics could impact and enhance retirement and pensions, along with how pension/retirement actuaries can utilize various enhanced analytical techniques. <em>This breakfast is open to all meeting attendees free of charge. If you plan to attend, you must register in advance.

Description: Actuaries continue to expand their breadth and depth of skills, business acumen, and industry knowledge. The presenters will share the many resources available to actuaries who wish to expand their reach and impact, including an overview of the resources available through the SOA, how it monitors emerging actuarial trends and acts on a changing professional landscape, how it identifies appropriate research projects, and how the association strives to deliver actuarial education to ensure its credentials are prestigious, relevant and globally recognized. If you want to engage with the actuarial profession on a deeper level, this session will help you understand the structure and will inspire you to grow yourself and the profession in a positive, meaningful way.

Description: Predictive modeling continues to gain traction in the life insurance industry with the rapid growth of available data and maturity of open source tools. New methods and technology in predictive analytics have enabled the evaluation of extremely large data more quickly and allow us to incorporate features previously not considered. The presenters will provide background on predictive modeling tools and algorithms utilized by actuaries and data scientists for life insurance, highlighting applications from marketing to underwriting.

Description: This third session in the Munich Re series continues with an exploration of responses to the changing workplace landscape from those inside the industry. The presenters will focus on practical approaches to identifying new opportunities, and on ways in which traditional products and sales channels are changing to meet emerging needs. Are voluntary benefits still relevant? Yes, but they are changing. While the first session provided an overview of the future workplace, this session will provide an overview of the current and evolving voluntary benefits market. Sales processes and products will be challenged to change to keep up with the new workplace dynamic. The presenters share strategies for developing products and sales channels that are robust and flexible enough to address evolving customer needs.

Description: Implementation of GAAP Targeted Improvements will impact data, reporting, resourcing and governance. This provides an ideal opportunity to rethink some of the data and reporting processes currently in place and how they can be improved to create effective and scalable solutions for the future. With the transition date already behind us for public companies and preparation in motion, we will share insights into how organizations have started to tackle implementing the GAAP Targeted Improvements. The presenters will share insights on data and process challenges and possible solutions, as well as a 'smart compliance' approach to comply with the most valuable aspects of compliance. Resourcing strategies for successful implementation will also be discussed.

Description: Legislative changes and the economic environment have created a need for plan sponsors to understand and manage pension risk and volatility. Dynamic asset allocation glidepaths reduce risk as plans become better funded. But what about the risk that plan sponsors face when their plans are underfunded? The presenters will discuss the challenges of managing pension risk when assets don't keep pace with liabilities.

Description: Hear an overview of InsurTech trends and challenges globally. Then, presenters will dive deeper to talk about InsurTech's application in insurance product distribution via smartphones and insurance company's risk selection, risk evaluation, risk control and the related challenges brought to actuaries. Specific applications and cases will be presented.

Description: Papers: Quantification and Management of Longevity Risk in China – Johnny Li, FSA, ACIA, Ph.D. - Univeristy of Melbourne, Kenneth Q. Zhou, ASA, ACIA, Ph.D. - Arizona State University, Wai-Sun Chan, FSA, CERA, Ph.D. - The Chinese University of Hong Kong A Value-Based Longevity Index for Hedging Retirement Income Portfolios – Kevin Krahe, Jonathan Ziveyi, Ph.D., Michael Sherris, FSA, FIAA, FIA, Andres M. Villegas, Ph.D. - UNSW Australia

Description: Papers: Rotation of the Age Pattern of Mortality Improvements in European Union Member States – Peter Vekas Corvinus University of Budapest Short and Long Term Dynamics of Cause-specific Mortality Rates Using the Cointegration Analysis – Severine Arnold, Ph.D.; Viktoriya Glushko – University of Lausanne

Description: Papers: Chronic Diseases and Longevity Risk: An Application to Type II Diabetes Insurance Products – Hsin-Chung Wang, Ph.D. - Aletheia University; Jack C. Yue, ASA, Ph.D. – National Chengchi University; Ting-Chung Chang - Chihlee University of Technology Understanding Multimorbidities - Sam Gutterman, FSA, CERA, FCA, FCAS, HONFIA, MAAA

Description: In this session, morbidity and life expectancy trends are discussed. In addition, a case study in R on how to model the uncertainty associated with incidence of disability, disabled and active deaths and other terminations is presented.

Description: In this session, attendees will learn to model historical mortality rates and to forecast their possible future scenarios, using a freely available and well-tested toolkit written in open source R. The core of the toolkit is implemented in the R package StMoMo (https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=StMoMo) and enables a practitioner to derive best estimate and measurements of uncertainty using academically robust demographic and actuarial mortality projection models.

Description: This session will discuss strategy and tactics for becoming good stewards of consumer/customer data. Topics will include various techniques, such as anonymization, pseudonymization, tokenization, and the merging of disparate, de-identified data sources.

Description: Business success in the future depends on assumptions we make today. However, we operate in a dynamic environment and cannot know with certainty what lies ahead. Addressing the challenge requires a synergy between data science, expert judgement, and decision making to spot changing drivers of key risks and respond with appropriate business action. We will be presenting development of such an "ecosystem" technically enabled by Natural Language Processing to monitor and detect signals from news streams. NLP is of increasing importance for insurance companies. Additional application examples are available in session 23.

Description: Investment risk management has become a core competency of insurance companies, and much has been discussed on this topic. This session examines the current investment risk management practices such as product line specific hedging and macro hedging, with a focus on what still remains to be addressed—whether the tradeoff of addition risk management is worthwhile.

Description: In this session, we will explore investment solutions that aim to maintain the long-term viability of a pension plan, with considerations on hedging interest rates, credit, inflation, longevity and other risks, while accounting for the many particularities associated with underlying liabilities and their corresponding ramifications.

Description: Representing a large indexed annuity writer, the speakers will discuss the growth and evolution of the market for index annuity products. Moreover, the challenges that growth has introduced and how those challenges are being met. While much of the market consists of simple, accumulation-oriented S&P 500 based strategies with 0% return floors, a significant portion of industry sales come from more complex products with highly customized index strategies and other features, such as living benefit guarantees. Attendees will gain a broad understanding of the indexed annuity market, product and features, operational difficulties in risk management arising from product design, and how actuarial and hedge professionals are managing these issues.

Description: The NAIC has adopted revised VM-21 and AG43 for variable annuities, effective Jan. 1, 2020. The panel of presenters will provide background and an overview of the revisions, discuss detailed aspects of the new CTE Amount Standard Projection and prescribed assumptions, as well as discuss implementation considerations and the implications to hedging. In addition, the panelists will share progress on VM-23, principle-based reserves for non-variable annuities.

Description: Representing a large indexed annuity writer, the speakers will discuss the growth and evolution of the market for index annuity products. Moreover, the challenges that growth has introduced and how those challenges are being met. While much of the market consists of simple, accumulation-oriented S&P 500 based strategies with 0% return floors, a significant portion of industry sales come from more complex products with highly customized index strategies and other features, such as living benefit guarantees. Attendees will gain a broad understanding of the indexed annuity market, product and features, operational difficulties in risk management arising from product design, and how actuarial and hedge professionals are managing these issues.

Description: In this session, a company will share its experience on managing risks underlying the equity-linked insurance guarantees and what lessons were learned over these years as it adapted its strategies to suit the current market environment.

Description: An exploration of drivers, cohorts and dynamics for policyholder behavior for VA and FIA based on industry experience data, including changes in recent years and the emergence of long-term data in key areas. We will also discuss critical elements to developing a sustainable and coherent framework to translate this complex experience data into assumption models.

Description: The speakers will discuss the replication of long-term options, including a discussion of issues such as liquidity, transaction costs, slippage, impact of policyholder behavior, and machine learning algorithms to improve hedge effectiveness.

Description: The speaker will discuss the training of neural networks to compute future Greeks of liabilities (or options) without the use of nested stochastics.

Description: The proposed revisions to the variable annuity statutory framework and the FASB targeted improvement for long duration contract, motivate life insurance companies to re-evaluate their hedging strategy. Recently proposed revisions of AG 43/VM-21 and C3 Phase II, reward companies that have a clearly defined hedging strategy, if the companies can demonstrate that the valuation model and capital model can estimate real hedge performance accurately. The speakers of this session will discuss the hedging implication of the proposed AG 43/VM-21 and C3 Phase II framework. Additionally, methodology computational requirements, back-testing results under different economic scenarios and the resulting hedge credits of different hedging strategies will be compared, including explicit dynamic hedge and implicit dynamic hedge. The speakers will also touch on the impact of rebalance frequency on the performance of dynamic hedge. Case studies will be presented to provide guidance on practical implementation.

Description: Techniques that have gained some traction in general (property/casualty) insurance will be highlighted with a particular focus on the linear mixed model. This model adds random effects to the more commonly seen fixed effects (for example, as used in GLMs).

Description: As any international traveler who has tried to plug in an electronic device knows, the human race is great at devising many different ways to accomplish the same task. Predictive modeling is no different. Data scientists can choose from a wide variety of languages to prepare data, fit models, and verify results. The Rosetta Stone, which showed writing composed in three languages side by side, was instrumental in translating unfamiliar Egyptian hieroglyphics into the more common Greek language. This presentation follows a similar approach by showing the same predictive model implemented in the following languages: R, Python, Spark, MatLab, and SAS. Participants will compare and contrast each of these languages and, by doing so, build a greater understanding of those languages less familiar to them.

Description: What pain points of customer experiences those startup companies address? How did they address? How they compete with bigger insurers? Their vision of future insurance

Description: This seminar is designed to give life and annuity practitioners an in-depth view of the important topics and fundamentals of reinsurance, from the perspective of a U.S. life insurance company. Reinsurance industry experts will present on the various types of reinsurance, contract issues, financial implications and other considerations. Attendees will leave this seminar with a stronger understanding of life and annuity reinsurance, and current topics. Keep in mind this seminar is designed for participants with a moderate level of experience. Educational Objectives • Provide attendees with a stronger understanding of life and annuity reinsurance, and current topics • Give attendees an in-depth view of important topics and fundamentals of reinsurance

Description: The NAIC has adopted revisions on Actuarial Guidelines 43 and C3 Phase II for Variable Annuities ("NAIC VA Reform"), effective January 1, 2020. The panel of presenters will provide background and overview of the Reform, and discuss detailed aspects of the new CTE Amount, Standard Projection and Withdrawal Delay Cohort Method. The panelists will share implementation considerations and the Reform's implications to hedging.

Description: With the halfway point of the transition period in the rear view mirror, many companies are well underway with their VM-20 implementation and analysis efforts. Beyond attempting to master the new rules of the road, actuaries have discovered new effects of product design and assumption setting. Panelists in this session will discuss their experiences with VM-20 reserves for various products and designs, their applications of actuarial judgement and the areas where even they don’t have all the answers. The audience is encouraged to bring their questions and also to share their insights.

Description: In this workshop format session, attendees will discuss the issues encountered when calculating principle-based reserves for life insurance products. At the conclusion of the session, attendees will be able to describe issues encountered when calculating principle-based reserves for life insurance products and discover potential solutions.

Description: Certain valuation assumptions are difficult to set with a high degree of accuracy, whether because the underlying experience is in different economic or interest rate environments, in addition to other reasons. Examples include assumptions for long-term care insurance, annuity options, lapsation and premium persistency on ULSG. This session will share how the actuary can use predictive analytics to augment the assumption-setting process. Some of the benefits to the actuary (along with the company and the regulator) include more accurate assumptions with lower margins for adverse deviations. Of possible interest as well is that applications go beyond valuation and include acquisitions, reinsurance and pricing.

Description: Baseline and what-if/stressed projections of cash flows, financial statements and capital requirements are critical inputs to a range of business purposes, including forecasts, risk management, liquidity management, strategic decision making, etc. Forward looking projections have historically been inefficient and performed in silos making it difficult to scale the process as CFOs and CROs ask for more. In this session we discuss challenges of the forecast process and opportunities to meet desired future capabilities. We will also discuss “what-if” analysis and ways to support production of forward looking projections for “what-if” analysis in an efficient way.

Description: Modeling methods and assumptions can be simple, complex, or somewhere between. This session will explore considerations and tradeoffs when determining approaches to different apsects of asset modeling in the context of ALM projection. Examples of advanced ALM applications to be discussed include credit risk modeling and duration/convexity management in ALM investment strategies.

Description: The arrival of ASU 2018-12 (a.k.a Targeted Improvements to the Accounting for Long-Duration Contracts or GAAP Targeted Improvements) presents insurers with augmented financial reporting risk across all areas of the valuation process. Naturally, the internal control frameworks that serve to mitigate these risks must evolve and expand. Valuation actuaries should view this transformative event as an opportunity to take an active role in developing new and improved controls that are both effective and sustainable.

Description: A session detailing how to calculate, understand and explain reserve movements in a PBR world. The session will illustrate how to: Calculate expected and actual reserve movements Analyze the results (SOE/GBS/EBS)Explain the results to a range of audience members, including a non-actuarial focus At the conclusion of the session, attendees will be able to evaluate reserve calculation, explain reserve movements and explain PBR earnings.

Description: While most actuaries work for companies and have as a primary objective the financial success of their employers, regulatory actuaries primarily serve the public interest. In part one of this presentation, we will explore the role of actuaries whose priority is to serve the public interest. Regulation is developed by a deliberative process that includes regulators, the American Academy of Actuaries, trade associations and the companies that will be affected by the regulation. In part two of this session, we will present a series of vignettes each focusing on recent updates to the Valuation Manual. At the conclusion of the session, attendees will have a deeper appreciation of what goes on behind the scenes in the development of regulation.

Description: Critical Illness Insurance is one of the fastest growing insurance products available today. Carriers continue to introduce innovative approaches in second, third, and fourth generation products while refining their pricing, underwriting, and claims adjudication processes. This session will look back at historical trends using Gen Re's longstanding, comprehensive Critical Illness Market Survey, and look forward to potential market changes to occur in the next 18 months.

Description: The key tasks of credit risk capital project under CROSS II mainly focus onL(1 )Adjustment of measurement framework; (2) Calibration of risk factors, including both credit spread risk and credit default risk;3)Introduction of concentration risk measurement; (4) Higher requirement on look-through rule.

Description: Underwriting is one of several areas in the insurance industry being impacted by insurtech. In this session, we will hear from experienced experts in underwriting transformation. Digitization, machine learning and other approaches are among topics to be discussed.

Description: Learn industry best practices including challenges faced by retirees, such as needing exposure to growth, most exposed to sequencing risk, and the need for smooth returns to avoid poor investor behavior caused by risk aversion. Other topics will include how to set investment objectives which consider the members’ real-world needs and how to build portfolios and implement risk management strategies to meet those objectives. The speaker will provide real-life examples/case studies.

Description: The last three decades have witnessed an important rise in number of people with diabetes in Asia, especially Type 2 Diabetes. Like no other common condition, numerous innovations are currently entering the healthcare system that will soon have a significant impact on management of the condition. This presentation explores the role played by sensors/wearables, artificial intelligence, new drugs and diabetes apps. We assess the realistic potential of such advancements and give an outlook on medium-term pricing and product development.

Description: Maintaining solid financial performance is a KPI for senior management. With the advancement of technology, the management can leverage new techniques to improve their decision making and focus on higher value activities in a timely manner. This presentation sets out the use of 1. correlation analysis to draw relationship between financial metrics and 2. smart analytics techniques, including text mining and analytics, to identify trends and drivers that impact the valuation of a company. We will also assess how the results of a comprehensive financial analysis could influence risk management considerations, including business steering and risk strategy.