Description: This chapter focuses on creating practical models that aid in the prediction of the risk of readmission to a specific hospital within 30 days of discharge for Medicare patients, to aid in the identification and stratification of at-risk patients for hospitals considering building an intervention program in a cost-effective manner. For readers who wish to develop their own predictive model, a dataset is provided on the Actexmadriver.com website, and R code is provided in the appendix to this chapter.

Description: When it comes to record linkage, the challenge is bringing together the right information from several sources. Here's how to make things match up.

Description: Research report sponsored by SOA to model and compare projected costs of different proposals for a Medicare prescription drug coverage plan. 3 types of costs are studied: net benefit cost estimates per member per month, continuance table data, and projected annual costs to the government over 10 years for two selected plan designs.

Description: This paper discusses the new Basel Accord for Capital Adequacy which refines the minimum capital requirements for banks. The seesion looks at the analysis of credit and market risks with the emphasis on to what extent the collection, storage and evaluation of data calculated with internal approaches is dispensable by the use of Basel II-data for bank banagement.

Description: This article provides information on how to navigate the Internet's World Wide Web and tap into resources of interest to actuaries.

Description: This actually is a copy of an appendix of a research paper sponsored by the SOA Committee on Finance Research. You can read the entire research paper: “Lapse Modeling for the Post-Level Period—a Practical Application of Predictive Modeling” at the SOA site https://www.soa.org/Research/Research-Projects/Finance-Investment/lapse-2015-modeling-post-level/#sthash.W9lERSls.dpbs, but you can read this valuable appendix copied here in this issue to see how to build a PM step-by-step using your data and the R programming language. We thank Richard Xu, Dihui Lai, Minyu Cao, Scott Rushing, and Tim Rozar for their excellent paper and the Society of Actuaries, for the permission to reprint this portion of the paper.

Description: The following case study walks through the steps of a predictive modeling exercise to illustrate one way analytics can streamline the underwriting paradigm.

Description: This paper is about a concept known as the 'rate of transmission of information' or, more simply, as the 'information rate.' The authors establish the equivalence of arbitrage-free economic systems and a generalized betting model in such a way that the interpretation of the information rate, as the maximum rate of increase of an investor's capital, is preserved. As a corollary to this result, they show that the difference in the information rate between models represents the achievable incremental return associated with the superior predictor model. From Actuarial Research Clearing House 1993, Vol. 3.

Description: Presented at June 1986 Spring Meeting. This session discussion is about the National Association Of Insurance Commissioners' Early Warning System, A.M. Best Company ratios, Conning and Company solvency ratios, and California Department of Insurance Empirical ratios.