Description: Learn more about improving the modelling of individual decisions.

Description: Different mortality projection methodologies are utilized by actuaries across applications and practice areas. As a result, the MIM Advisory Group developed a single framework to serve as a consistent base for practitioners in projecting mortality improvement.

Description: This report introduces quantum computing to actuaries. In addition, this research will assess and identify areas in the insurance field where quantum computing can make a difference, accompanied with suggested algorithms.

Description: The objective of this paper is to provide a practical guide with concrete case studies to help actuaries implement artificial intelligence and machine learning (AIML) to help accelerate the speed of analysis for life and annuity actuarial modeling. We do so by researching the existing literature regarding AIML and its applicability to stochastic modeling and exploring case studies.

Description: The global doubling of information content has been estimated to occur at a rate of every 12 hours, and conceivably faster. This ‘infowhelm’ is a double-edged sword for insurers. While maximization of the global knowledge base can fuel innovation, it can occur only in the context of reasonable cost for a higher benefit. The insurance industry – underwriters and actuaries in particular – are challenged to constantly examine new innovations that promise to raise confidence and protective value for insurability, within legal limits. This report aims to be the first of several to alert the SOA of promising innovations for the profession.

Description: The Society of Actuaries’ Committee on Finance Research is pleased to make available a research report covering the extent to which investment sectors have been contagiously affected by major disasters.

Description: The journey for microinsurance, nowadays called inclusive insurance, started a long time ago and is not complete in the majority of the low-income and low middle-income markets. When seeking to enhance inclusive insurance markets, it is useful and necessary to have a good understanding because it entails a different treatment of customers, distribution, products, pricing, client management, premium collection, claims declaration and settlement, and reporting.

Description: View the Primer on Retirement Income Strategy Design and Evaluation.

Description: Non-guaranteed elements are parameters of life insurance and annuity polices that are not fixed when the policy is issued but may be changed from time to time by the insurance company. They emerged in the United States and other countries as features of Universal Life and similar products designed to make insurance more competitive in an environment where fully guaranteed products did not have sufficient flexibility to respond to rapidly changing conditions. This overview covers professional guidance, regulations and practical issues with reviewing and revising non-guaranteed parameters.

Description: View The Impact of Disaster Events on Investments – Contagion Channels Perspective.

Description: A literature review was performed on mortality improvement, socioeconomic differences in mortality and their links to specific causes of death, and methods for analysis. It highlighted the fact that socioeconomic status (e.g., income and education) is closely linked to differences in mortality and that the longevity gap between socioeconomic groups is growing over time. It also informed the selection of key variables and the need to view mortality improvement as a complex interaction between specific causes of death.

Description: Enterprise risk management (ERM) is an orderly or guided conduct of an enterprise to deal with risks. For insurers, ERM requires full support and commitment of the senior management. ERM in the U.S. and Canada has evolved over the years into a complex ecosystem.

Description: Enterprise risk management (ERM) is an orderly or guided conduct of an enterprise to deal with risks. For insurers, ERM requires full support and commitment of the senior management. ERM in the U.S. and Canada has evolved over the years into a complex ecosystem.

Description: This report was developed by the CESRC as an update of one Rob Erhardt prepared in 2016 that compiled a collection of sources that deal with what scientists know and what actuaries could do. Sources have been chosen with practicing actuaries and the public in mind. In the original report, nearly all governmental sources come from the United States. In the update an attempt was made to include sources from actuarial bodies and regulators worldwide. Please let us know if you have a source we did not include as it is anticipated that the SOA will continue to update a list of sources for these topics in the future.

Description: Decentralized insurance alternatives is a rapidly expanding sector of Decentralized Finance (DeFi), an emerging and growing financial ecosystem powered by blockchain technologies. The purpose of this report is to review and discuss the business models and operating designs of decentralized insurance alternatives, which may have significant implications for traditional insurance businesses, as well as the actuarial profession.

Description: Decentralized insurance alternatives is a rapidly expanding sector of Decentralized Finance (DeFi), an emerging and growing financial ecosystem powered by blockchain technologies. The purpose of this report is to review and discuss the business models and operating designs of decentralized insurance alternatives, which may have significant implications for traditional insurance businesses, as well as the actuarial profession.

Description: View the Avoiding Unfair Bias in Insurance Applications of AI Models

Description: The Chinese insurance market is grappling with product innovation, business growth and regulatory oversight as it tries to keep pace with a sharp growth in demand across product segments. In this context, the authors have highlighted insurance trends in China, based on available research and literature, with a particular focus on topics that will drive the enterprise risk management (ERM) function of insurance companies. ERM provides an opportunity for insurers to identify and mitigate potential insurance risks by enhancing their policies and risk management activities. This report explores the insurance trends in detail, drawing on findings from interviews of practitioners in the Chinese market, to provide context for the drivers of ERM transformation.

Description: The Society of Actuaries Research Institute is pleased to make available a report that aims to understand the cause of low annuity demand through the angle of mortality model uncertainty.

Description: The Aging and Retirement Strategic Research Program is pleased to make available a guide written by Financial Finesse to help older retirees and those who assist them make informed decisions.

Description: Climate change affects everyone. Proactive responses that look forward to anticipate future conditions will optimize infrastructure investments rather than dealing with the crisis as extreme events arrive. Cities can address local concerns utilizing a process that is repeatable in other jurisdictions.

Description: This study and report have the following primary purposes: 1. Evaluate recent mortality experience relative to standard industry mortality tables, at a broad level. 2. Observe general trends in mortality experience by key policy characteristics. Where possible, provide insights into the industry changes contributing to the observed trends. 3. Provide the underlying data in spreadsheet pivot table format for further investigation by qualified actuaries. Provide data also in a delimited text file and Tableau dashboards for use with other software tools.

Description: The aim of this project is to present proposals for Variable Uninsured Life Annuities—or “Value annuities.” The report and the accompanying models illustrate how Value annuities work.

Description: This report provides an educational background on the process of building predictive models, as well as a detailed presentation of the model results. Predictive models provide a method to capture variation by multiple variables and understand the relationship between these variables. This allows for a deeper understanding of key variables than is possible under a traditional approach.

Description: The Society of Actuaries Aging & Retirement Strategic Research Program and Retirement Section are pleased to make available a report that introduces predictive analytics to pension actuaries.

Description: The Society of Actuaries Research Institute commissioned this study to highlight the leading emerging technologies that may significantly affect the actuarial profession over a three-year horizon. This study will act as a guide and a resource for actuaries or potential employers to identify the prospective tools to enhance or expand actuarial work, for people collaborating with actuaries who may be affected by these technologies, and for leaders looking to enable teams employing actuaries through the introduction of these tools. It’s noted that actuaries should embrace technologies that enhance the remote working experience within their internal teams and across departments by investigating functionalities beyond messaging and video calls. Actuarial organizations and employers should examine technologies where there is a wide range or gap in maturity and familiarity and evaluate whether a knowledge gap exists and whether any gap is due to lack of education and training.

Description: This report discusses management decision making practices and the need for actuaries to build the appropriate level of variability for management actions in stochastic models to achieve a more realistic range of future experience among the stochastic scenarios.

Description: The monograph walks the reader through the hindsight, insight and foresight building process while discussing theoretical and practical issues supporting the building of valid forecasts with provenance for each of these schema examples. That is, the analyst can document the iterative ‘profiling change processes’ mindscape and landscape elements by which and through which the successful forecast is built. This kind of forecast construction ameliorates the ‘black box’ problem of generating pattern output without an understanding of the pattern’s creation or contextual meaning that is often seen when using other methods, particularly machine learning and artificial intelligence. This issue is discussed, referencing appropriate thought leaders.

Description: Early detection and assessment of insurer’s insolvency risk are critically important to regulators, insurers, policyholders, and investors for fiduciary assessment of insurer’s financial stability and for protection of potential financial loss associated with insurer’s insolvency. This proposed study aims to develop a market-based insolvency prediction model to detect financially distressed insurers at an early stage with the information content of higher moments from the market.

Description: Integrated Assessment Models (IAM) combine scientific scenarios that project changes in greenhouse gas (GHG) levels, resulting in global temperature increases and meteorological volatility when GHG increases, with quantitative economic models expanding on an aligned narrative.

Description: The Society of Actuaries’ Committee on Finance Research is pleased to make available a research report that develops a framework for applying deep learning and reinforcement learning techniques to optimal dynamic strategic asset allocation for Liability Driven Investment (LDI).

Description: The Society of Actuaries’ Committee on Finance Research is pleased to make available a research report that develops a framework for applying deep learning and reinforcement learning techniques to optimal dynamic strategic asset allocation for Liability Driven Investment (LDI).

Description: In this paper, we propose a novel class of propagation models to study the cybersecurity risks in fog computing cased IoT architectures, which are significantly different from the quantitative frameworks used in the existing cyber-related works within actuarial literature.

Description: This report is intended to serve as a guide to the InsurTech landscape for the actuarial community and insurance practitioners. InsurTech is the use of emerging hardware, software and user interfaces to address inefficiencies or opportunities in the insurance value chain. It often involves technology, data and analytics.

Description: The Retirement Section and Retirement Section Research Committee are pleased to make available a research report examining academic and practitioner research on low interest rates in the United States.

Description: The Retirement Section and Retirement Section Research Committee are pleased to make available a research report examining academic and practitioner research on low interest rates in the United States.

Description: The Society of Actuaries’ Committee on Finance Research and Joint Risk Management Section Research Committee are pleased to make available a research report developing a framework for quantifying and analyzing various forms of contractual designs.

Description: The purpose of this document is to inform the user of the 2022 Health Care Cost Model about the sources of data, other reports, and assumptions which were used to populate this report and drive some of the key considerations.

Description: The COVID-19 pandemic and its economic effects have resulted in significant insurance impacts. The General Insurance Research Committee (GIRC) of the SOA put forth a call for essays exploring the potential effects on commercial liability insurance. The committee selected this essay, “Evolving Trends in Commercial Liability Insurance,” submitted by Karl Canty and Varun Balutia of EXL, and awarded them a prize of $1,000. The GIRC congratulates the authors and is happy to publish the winning essay on The Actuary website

Description: This paper provides a high-level review of climate models for the actuary and shows they are not impenetrable, intriguing the reader enough to seek out additional resources.

Description: The unprecedented losses associated with recent wildfires are yet another call to insurers to understand how climate change is impacting the landscape of fire hazards. In this report, to further advance understanding of relationship between fire hazard and climate change, for both academic and practitioner communities, we review emerging evidence showing that policies surrounding tree planting are increasingly important for fire hazard insurance. Furthermore, we discuss relevant risk factors and potential mechanisms when accounting for these policies.

Description: We summarize some of the developments in corporate sustainability. The guiding principles of corporate sustainability are developed on the global stage, but implementation of these principles necessarily occurs at the individual company level. Our aim is to educate actuaries on the broad principles, point curious readers towards more research, and inspire actions that actuaries can take within their organizations to strengthen the long-term sustainability of the industries that actuaries serve.

Description: The Society of Actuaries Retirement Section is pleased to make available material that addresses the challenges in communicating pension risk to stakeholders.

Description: The Society of Actuaries is pleased to make available a research report that investigates defined benefit retirement plan de-risking activities for U.S.-based companies and the relative impact of various implemented strategies.

Description: The personal auto insurance industry is constantly changing. There are small and steady changes over time (e.g., inflation affecting the cost of repairs or general progress in the safety of vehicles) and sharp spikes (e.g., disasters and legislation). That change has never been more apparent with the Covid-19 pandemic, civil unrest, and driverless cars all presently having a significant impact on personal auto insurance.

Description: The personal auto insurance industry is constantly changing. There are small and steady changes over time (e.g., inflation affecting the cost of repairs or general progress in the safety of vehicles) and sharp spikes (e.g., disasters and legislation). That change has never been more apparent with the Covid-19 pandemic, civil unrest, and driverless cars all presently having a significant impact on personal auto insurance.

Description: The Aging and Retirement Strategic Research Program is pleased to make available a report summarizing the research phase of a multi-phase project leading to publication of a Conversation Guide to plan for changes in financial capacity and decision-making.

Description: Summary in Simplified Chinese

Description: Report Summary in Simplified Chinese.

Description: The objective of this paper is to discuss the factors that affect and should be considered in the development of social discount rates, with a primary focus on social cost-benefit analyses of climate change-related strategies, programs, and investments involving mitigation and ex-ante adaption efforts.

Description: This report investigates the financial consequences of delaying CPP payments. The intent is to provide a quantitative basis to better inform the take-up decisions of Canadians for whom delaying CPP benefits might provide improved financial outcomes and greater retirement income security.

Description: The Society of Actuaries Smaller Insurance Company Section, the Financial Reporting Section, and the Committee on Life Insurance Research are pleased to make available new research investigating simplified methods for determining reserves under VM-20.

Description: This is the Demographic Perspectives on the Rise of Longevity paper authored by Marie-Pier Bergeron Boucher, James W. Vaupel and Francisco Villavicencio for Session 4A of the January 13-15, 2020 Living to 100 Symposium in Orlando, Florida.

Description: This chart provides information for consumers and other audiences on retirement risks and strategies for managing these risks.

Description: Because of its complexity, ensuring the security of cyberspace is one of today’s most significant challenges. As the cyber environment becomes more integrated with the real world, the direct impact of cybersecurity incidents on business is also heightened. This study aims to develop a generic model that can be applied by any organization. For the validation of the developed cyber risk analysis method, simulations and sensitivity analysis will be performed.

Description: The Casualty Actuarial Society, Canadian Institute of Actuaries, and the Society of Actuaries' Joint Risk Management Section and the Joint Risk Management Research Committee are pleased to make available a new report on the application of ERM. Authored by Bonnie-Jeanne MacDonald, Sim Segal, Michael Wolfson and Heidi Walsh, the report provides a novel demonstration on how ERM can be applied to serve the Canadian public by informing decision makers on the risks facing the current and future delivery of long-term care.

Description: Winning essays form the Actuarial Practice Innovation Call for Essays.

Description: The 2019 Long-Term Care (LTC) Medical Symposium was a one-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 2019 symposium built on and complemented the first annual symposium held in 2018. The focus in 2019 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: Winning essays form the Actuarial Practice Innovation Call for Essays.

Description: Since the outbreak began in January, numerous research groups throughout the world have developed models to forecast the number of deaths that could result from COVID-19. Updated April 24, 2020.

Description: This paper introduces actuaries and others to dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) models, a type of macroeconomic model. Authored by Kailan Shang, the paper illustrates how DSGE models can be used in economic scenario generation to reflect the cause and effect relationships that occur in the economic system.

Description: Since the outbreak began in January, numerous research groups throughout the world have developed models to forecast the number of deaths that could result from COVID-19.

Description: Retirement market study of Brazil in English

Description: This report looks at identifying drivers of systemic risk to China’s insurance industry and develops a measurement method for systemic risk as well as systemic risk dependence between the insurance industry and other industries.

Description: This report looks at identifying drivers of systemic risk to China’s insurance industry and develops a measurement method for systemic risk as well as systemic risk dependence between the insurance industry and other industries.

Description: Results of the PBITT Working Group annual Variable Annuity Survey.

Description: Electronic Health Records, or EHRs, are a major worldwide initiative to eliminate paper recordings – including Attending Physician Statements (APSs) – of an individual’s medical history and current treatment.

Description: A literature review report that looks at research on how artificial intelligence is used in actuarial work.

Description: The SOA is pleased to make available a report updating the 2012 risk assessment performed by Porteous et al. The report also provided an economic capital analysis for a stylized US plan with the same member profile and the USS provisions modified to reflect a typical US DB plan.

Description: This research paper studies catastrophe insurance pools covering losses caused by extreme weather events.

Description: Unmet needs and implications for long-term care financing in Singapore.

Description: The scope of this paper is to provide a technical overview of the tools and disciplines currently in AI as well as the forces at work that financial institutions such as insurance companies are using to modernize their analytical processes.

Description: The first of two reports focused on how families cope with the final years of life. This report summarizes 40 interviews with children of recently deceased parents.

Description: The SOA's Aging & Retirement Strategic Research Program and Financial Finesse are pleased to make available a series of briefs focused on retirement literacy issues. The Retirement Planning Tools brief provides a resource for better understanding retirement tools.

Description: In this report, we will try to provide an in-depth review of current Machine Learning and Deep Learning models and will explain how those models works and their possible applications in the actuarial field. The recent studies and successes from the industry will also be discussed. We intend to bring more actuaries onboard about those technologies and start to think about how to bring them into our daily work.