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: Part II of a two-part series discussing individual market evolution from before the ACA through President Trump's first term.

Description: China’s pension system has transformed from traditional retirement system based on command economy to modern pension system based on market economy.

Description: Asia is experiencing changing demographic, social, and cultural tides which threaten to submerge existing retirement-pension systems.

Description: A plain-language, high-level explanation of employer withdrawal liability issues, including how they grew to be large and barriers to their collection.

Description: This article will focus on introducing where IFRS17 differs from US GAAP conceptually, and key aspects of this paradigm shift from actuaries’ perspective.

Description: This article examines the relationship, future and current, between insurance agents and technology and determines that technology can enhance/optimize agents.

Description: Insurance companies utilize derivatives in a variety of ways to manage and mitigate risks that are inherent in their investment or liability portfolios. They can be characterized by three main features: medium long-term duration; large volumes; and significant market risk exposure. Given the persistent low interest rate environment across the curve since the 2008 financial crisis, large companies need to hedge their liabilities, as illustrated by the significant recent increase from $786 billion as of fiscal year 2010 to $1,885 billion as of FY 2014 by insurance companies.As the Variable Annuities (VA) guarantees embedded within those liabilities hold a strong convex risk profile with respect to the underlying stock, VA carriers need to buy some convex hedge assets such as options to match the liability risk profile to improve hedge effectiveness, implying the growing cost of hedging. Such market impact of the quantity on the cost of hedging is further magnified in the recent period with the short-lived, but sharp transitions from low volatility to high volatility, when market volatility suddenly increases, even when there were no well-known fundamental catalysts. This partially stems from the growing managed volatility funds embedded within VA ($bn 400).VA carriers willing to trade a large quantity of options will see such market impact as an important dilemma, as the cost of placing one large order to close position will be far greater than the sum of infinitely small orders differed in time. In that context, managing market impact requires introducing an explicit market impact function, the influence of which the agent will try to minimize. The effect on hedge asset prices significantly depends on whether there is or not significant delta hedging activity. In case of no significant delta hedging activity, the risk appetite has a significant influence on the optimal execution strategy. If there is significant delta hedging activity, the optimal trading involve

Description: The Effect of Medical Technology on Health Care Cost, the Effect of Health Care on Longevity and Vice Versa.

Description: The Effect of Medical Technology on Health Care Cost, the Effect of Health Care on Longevity and Vice Versa.

Description: Overview/Foreword by the 2017 Symposium Chair and Foreword by the 2020 Symposium Chair.

Description: Recaps the evolution of VA products and hedging programs. Reflects on strategic considerations that contributed to relative performance in this market.

Description: Study of the impact of IRS proposed mortality tables on private sector pension plan costs, including liabilities, contributions and PBGC premiums.

Description: Read the February 2017 issue of Taxing Times published by the The Taxation Section. Newsletters provide practical information for the working actuary, articles on trends that impact sections and news about section activities.

Description: A sound enterprise risk management (ERM) framework functions as an ecosystem by balancing the interdependencies of its elements while constantly adapting to an ever‐changing, external environment. Each stakeholder has a unique role to play in forming a thriving ERM ecosystem by integrating risk‐conscientiousness in decision‐making. A resilient ERM framework has a single well‐ understood risk language and culture to promote healthy risk‐taking behaviors. The central focus of such a framework is concentrated around all stakeholders and everyone is held accountable. Every day, external forces can potentially disrupt how we operatively conduct business. Unforeseen changes in regulation, market trends, terrorist’s attacks and extreme natural disasters are often categorized as extremely adverse. How then will your ERM ecosystem survive the one‐in‐200 event and continue to flourish through dynamically changing environments?

Description: A sound enterprise risk management (ERM) framework functions as an ecosystem by balancing the interdependencies of its elements while constantly adapting to an ever‐changing, external environment. Each stakeholder has a unique role to play in forming a thriving ERM ecosystem by integrating risk‐conscientiousness in decision‐making. A resilient ERM framework has a single well‐ understood risk language and culture to promote healthy risk‐taking behaviors. The central focus of such a framework is concentrated around all stakeholders and everyone is held accountable. Every day, external forces can potentially disrupt how we operatively conduct business. Unforeseen changes in regulation, market trends, terrorist’s attacks and extreme natural disasters are often categorized as extremely adverse. How then will your ERM ecosystem survive the one‐in‐200 event and continue to flourish through dynamically changing environments?

Description: Up until recent past, the artificial intelligence portion of data science was looked upon cautiously due to its history of booms and flops . In the latest stream of events, major improvements have taken place in this field and now deep learning, the new leading front for Artificial Intelligence, presents a promising prospect for overcoming problems of big data.

Description: A discussion on how life insurers can improve the performance of their in-force portfolios.

Description: Metadata for entire issue

Description: Presents the results of the 2014 Life Reinsurance Survey - an annual survey showing new business writings and in force figures by reinsurance company for the North American life reinsurance industry (US and Canada)

Description: Essential Health Benefits and Actuarial Value

Description: Recaps April 2015 seminar on derivatives use for fund managers and insurers in China. Describes growth in Chinese derivatives market including CSI 300 futures

Description: This article summarizes the presentations by the Society of Actuaries and the Academy of Actuaries at the January 2015 National Academy of Social Insurance (NASI) Roundtables in Washington DC. SOA presented on the 2014 SOA monograph series "The Link between Retirement Security and Long-Term Care."

Description: E-book contains 16 topical essays that express the opinions and thoughts of a number of authors on the subject of Investment Fallacies.

Description: Investment Fallacies: Mathematical modeling of social phenomena

Description: Investment Fallacies: The Myth of Time Diversification

Description: The author uses a reprint of an article from the very first edition of the “News from the Individual Life Insurance and Annuity Product Development Section” and assistance from the Taxation Section Council and Friends of that Council to decipher the changes between the life insurance tax environment back in the 1980s compared to today.

Description: The March 2013 issue of Reinsurance News

Description: This essay examines several key factors that have contributed to China’s success in the economic reform spanning the past three decades and the double-edged nature of these factors going forward.

Description: Excerpts of blast emails sent out by the SmallCo Section are highlighted, covering life insurance valuation, federal reserve action, and nonforfeiture interest rates.

Description: A discussion of the three kinds of reserve strengthening

Description: Feature article discussing guidelines for adopting ORSA.

Description: Feature article discussing how market interest rates and bond yields dropped in response to the global financial crisis in late 2008, and they have struggled to return to their prior levels, in part because the Federal Reserve has made efforts to spur growth and lending in a sluggish U.S. economy.

Description: Explanation of Medicare Advantage STAR rating program as it relates to payment rates for MA bids. Also describes important features of the program from an actuarial perspective, how the components of the STAR rating are calculated and implications and considerations for actuaries.

Description: This monograph was presented at the 2011 Enterprise Risk Management Symposium, held March 14-16 in Chicago. The author, writing from a property-liability insurance perspective, notes that capital allocation is a theoretical exercise because all of a firm’s capital could be depleted to cover a significant loss arising from any one segment. However, firms do need to allocate capital for pricing, risk management and performance evaluation. In this paper, the cost of capital in financial markets is incorporated into the Ruhm-Mango-Kreps algorithm to yield one allocation that reflects the true cost of capital an insurer would face.

Description: This is a research project discussing on the needs and opportunities of the older age market to be used in the development and distribution of products that will protect future retirees from financial risk.

Description: This report helps to identify key socioeconomic trends influencing the need and demand for the industry's products and services, and how these trends will influence marketing methods.

Description: Collection of essays received in response to the “Systemic Risk, Financial Reform and Moving Forward from the Financial Crisis” call for essays.

Description: Potential actions are recommended for key stakeholders to manage the unintended consequences of systemic risk “brewing” within the retirement system today.

Description: Discusses the results of the SOA’s 2009 UL secondary guarantee study conducted by the Policy Behavior in the Tail PBITT working group.

Description: A discussion of insurance claims processing and payment systems, and how to achieve the minimum possible number of errors.

Description: Summary of recent SOA-sponsored research on Enterprise Risk Management practices as applied to health insurers, self-insured plans, and health finance professionals.

Description: NewsDirect article that discusses the benefits of automating the underwriting process. Underwriting speed, the east of case submission and sales support stand out as the most important factors.

Description: Life Insurance 2020 Foresight e-book of essays including introduction

Description: Response to Life Insurance 2020 Foresight – A Call for Essays. An essay stating the author’s vision for the future of the life insurance sector. Some smaller companies might focus on smaller niche markets rather than compete with larger companies in the broader markets.

Description: This article provides some insights into the creativity employed in cash flow testing to help ensure the sound survival of small companies that have limited means.

Description: Chairman’s corner addressing the many recent external events which have impacted the level of trust in the insurance industry and how this affects product and marketing success for the industry.

Description: This article discusses Variable Annuity products with significant guaranteed minimum benefits, and hedging strategies used by insurers due to the mark to market accounting requirements for these liabilities under GAAP. It focuses in particular on delta-hedging and the implications of the 2008 market volatility.

Description: Since the adoption of FAS 157, there has been much concern about the use of a company's own credit risk in the valuation of liabilities. To fully assess the implications of this requirement, the author argues that more research will be required.

Description: This is the version of the SOA’s research report that appeared in the July 2008 issue of the Actuarial Practice Forum. This report presents modeling results of the possible impact of the IASB’s preliminary views of accounting for insurance contract liabilities on certain U.S. Life, health and annuity insurance products. This report presents comparisons of selected U.S. GAAP values to corresponding values of the proposed International Financial Reporting Standard IFRS results.

Description: A study on stochastic simulation literature as it applies to a health actuary.

Description: Attempts to Quantify Potential Impact of Pandemic Influenza on the U.S. Life Insurance Industry

Description: This article discusses the implications of a principle-based reserve PBR system with respect to federal income taxation of life insurance companies, particularly with respect to tax reserves and their deductibility for tax purposes. The article discusses potential problems with existing tax rules for reserve deduction, what courses of action the IRS could take, and suggestions for design features of a PBR approach that would make it more consistent with current tax rules. Life insurance product tax implications are also discussed.

Description: This session presents information sources used in tracking health technologies, the value of health technology assessments and clinical data typically available. From the Record of the Society of Actuaries, Vol. 31, No. 2, Session 4

Description: “Non-traditional” guarantees refer to guarantees that are in addition to traditional mortality, expense, and interest guarantees. Examples of such types of guarantees are death and living benefits on variable annuity contracts and no-lapse guarantees on universal life or variable universal life products. The purpose of this paper is to offer practitioners an overview of the various issues concerning the pricing of these guarantees, the many other issues which need to be analyzed and addressed in the determination of risks and the management of the block of business, and the results of a company survey of practices. This paper is based on the working knowledge of the authors, a broad compilation of literature and the company survey results. At the end of most sections of the paper, we have provided a list of resources which we have selected as some of the best sources available for those practitioners interested in researching the subject matter further.

Description: One of the first projects undertaken by Claim Analytics was to create a model to predict return to work for group insurance claimants with long term disabilities. This report, sponsored in part by the Society of Actuaries Health Section , is a case study on creating such a model.

Description: The intent of this paper is to establish a correct balance between company interests in investing pension fund assets in the company's own stock and the prudent requirements of good risk management. From Current Pension Actuarial Practice in Light of Financial Economics Symposium, M-RS04-1.

Description: This paper assesses the extent to which equity investors were fooled by pension accounting. Simulations show that a failure to differentiate between core and pension earnings induces large valuation errors for many firms, although this pension effect did not materially contribute to aggregate overvaluation before 2000. From Current Pension Actuarial Practice in Light of Financial Economics Symposium, M-RS04-1.

Description: This paper examines the use of alternative investments for pension funds in the Netherlands facing the three requirements of minimum funding, solvency, and continuity. From Current Pension Actuarial Practice in Light of Financial Economics Symposium, M-RS04-1.

Description: Discussion of growth in popularity of UL products designed to focus on the guarantee of death benefit protection rather than cash value accumulation and some of the pricing and reserving issues with respect to those products

Description: This discussion on long-term care [LTC] highlights secondary drivers in LTC experience in both insured and general populations. Practical applications of this new information for pricing, reserving and marketing is discussed. From the Record of the Society of Actuaries, Volume 28, No. 2, Session 42pd.

Description: Panelists and audience members give their views on health-insurance topics including recent large claims experience, frequency and severity components of large claims trends, pricing, reserving, and the outlook for the future. From the 2002 Record of Society of Actuaries, Volume 28, No. 2. Session 79OF of the San Francisco Spring Meeting.

Description: Presented at May 2002 Spring Meeting. This session covers the AICPA's proposed statement of position on accounting and reporting by insurance enterprises for certain nontraditional, long-duration contracts and for separate accounts. It requires new GAAP reserves for certain variable annuities with guaranteed minimum death benefits 'GMDBs'.

Description: Presented at May 2002 Spring Meeting. This session covers the current status of FAS 133 and extensions such as the proposed statement of position on accounting and reporting by insurance enterprises for certain nontraditional, long-duration contracts and for separate accounts.

Description: Presented at May 2002 Spring Meeting. Panelists address recent, current, and proposed activity in the life insurance company financial reporting environment. This session provides updates on a number of GAAP, statutory, tax and international financial reporting issues.

Description: Presented at May 2002 Spring Meeting. Discusses accounting methods in different countries as well as recent developments in international accounting standards for insurance.

Description: Stochastic DAC Unlocking for Variable Annuity Products by Alastair Longley-Cook, Dick Shaw, Mike Sherrill, and Jay Vadiveloo from The Financial Reporter, March 2001, Issue No. 45.

Description: This presentation is a teaching session, number 98TS, from the 2000 Annual Meeting of the Society of Actuaries, held October 15-18 in Chicago. The financial services industry is changing rapidly. Thirty years ago the industry made its profits from mortality and expense margins in premiums. Fifteen years ago it was interest margins on fixed annuities and universal life. Today profits come from fees on variable products, interest margin on fixed products, and mortality on term insurance. The instructors look to the future and discuss where profits will come from 10 years from now. Discussion from participants is included. From the Record of Society of Actuaries, Volume 26, No. 3.

Description: This analysis provides an overview of the functional components of the managed care system. It discusses the market forces underlying the United States’ system for health care financing and delivery and suggests how market forces impact the health care industry. The analysis focuses on societal goals for health care delivery and on managed care’s effectiveness in enabling achievement of those goals. The analysis develops and uses an innovative model developed to summarize the complex interplay among the many stakeholders, or participants, in the health care system. The model provides a framework for analysis of the many relationships among stakeholders. The analysis also highlights current issues in managed care, particularly the barriers that impede collaboration among stakeholders.

Description: From a session at a meeting of the Society of Actuaries held in San Diego, CA, June 22-23, 2000 Discussion of how actuaries can influence federal legislation in issues of interest to life insurance companies.

Description: Dynamically Hedging Insurance Product Risk by Marshall C. Greenbaum from Risks and Rewards Newsletter, April 2000, Issue No. 34. A dynamic hedging program cab be an effective solution to insurance company market risk management problems.

Description: This is a series of 4 articles designed to address fundamental concepts such as GAAP rules and their application to some of the major accident and health lines of business offered by insurers. The first article begins with a review of the structure/hierarchy of generally accepted accounting principles GAAP. From Society of Actuaries Financial Reporting Monograph, M-AS99-1.

Description: This presentation, session number 79PD, took place at the 1999 Spring Meeting of the Society of Actuaries, held June 16-18 in Seattle. The panelists examine the history, growth, and the purpose of mutual life insurance companies, and the current interest in demutualization and the formation of the mutual holding company. They look at the current changing conditions—legal, economic, and market, and the search for alternative ways to access the capital markets. Topics include company management, advisors, regulators and their concerns, and recent activities among supporters and opponents of mutual company structure. Discussion from participants is included. From the Record of the Society of Actuaries, Vol. 25, No. 2.

Description: Panelist discuss issues relating to new medical technologies and how these are going to affect the practice of medicine, the delivery of care, the costs of care, the insuring of care, claims handling, utilization, and cost management. From the Record of the Society of Actuaries, Vol. 25, No. 2.

Description: From a session at the Spring regional meeting of the Society of Actuaries held in Atlanta, Georgia, May 24-25, 1999 Panelists discuss the process of selecting outside investment managers.