Description: Through much of the Baby Boomer generation's working lifetime, retirement planning focused on asset accumulation. Strategies like Dollar-Cost Averaging and Asset Diversification became well understood by nearly everyone in the retirement industry. As those assets move into the payout phase (post retirement), the appropriateness of those strategies becomes less clear. Presenters will aim to exhibit and explain how and why adding a Single Premium Immediate Annuity (SPIA) or Deferred Income Annuity (DIA) to a retirement portfolio can help to minimize a retiree's chance of outliving his or her income, and why sellers of annuities should focus more heavily on these product offerings. At the conclusion of the session, attendees will be able to - Identify the reasons why effective asset accumulation strategies may be ineffective in the decumulation phase of retirement - Evaluate the benefit of using at least a portion of accumulated retirement assets to purchase a fixed income stream that the annuitant is guaranteed not to outlive - Explain the benefits of a SPIA/DIA focus to other industry practitioners

Description: Regulatory change and increased focus on internal risk management are driving a renewed interest in model efficiency. In this session, we will review several new and existing tools, that show significant promise for advanced modeling of equity linked products. These include: • Clustering • Use of unique--and potentially a different number of--scenarios for each policy • Semi Monte Carlo (SMC) – this is a proprietary technique that is similar to a combination of Monte Carlo and numeric integration • Using a neural network approach to optimize some of the more complex and manual aspects of clustering and improve the fit of the clustered model • Combining SMC with the use of unique scenarios per policy

Description: There is no “industry standard” approach to managing the vega (volatility) risk inherent in Variable Annuity Guarantees, Fixed Indexed Annuities and other equity-linked obligations. In this session, we will introduce and analyze a range of reinsurance solutions, including full vega risk retention, full vega risk transfer and more sophisticated or custom structures that split the vega risk between the insurer and the reinsurer in various ways. We will also explore other approaches in bespoke risk coverage and show the impact of different assumptions on a generic “VA Guarantee Cost Estimate” that has been developed by Munich Re.

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: 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: What we should look out for heading into one, how long and how deep would one last?

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.