Description: The implementation of the IFRS 17 insurance accounting standard has brought significant changes to the financial reporting landscape of insurance companies. With new disclosure requirements and altered profit analysis, understanding and interpreting future profitability have become a topic of concern for the industry. While stability remains a key objective for insurance companies, the earning patterns might become more volatile especially when the contractual service margin (CSM) is exhausted, and a loss component (LC) needs to be established. Reinsurance, a common risk mitigation tool, can play a pivotal role in managing earnings volatility and minimizing losses for onerous measurement units. In this article, we propose a new key performance indicator (KPI) called “loss recoverability” to assess the performance of reinsurance treaties in achieving these objectives. We explain how this KPI can be utilized in multiple scenarios to evaluate the effectiveness of reinsurance strategies and pursue stability in earning patterns.

Description: This is the first in a series of articles about accounting for reinsurance under GAAP Targeted Improvements to the Accounting for Long-Duration Contracts (LDTI). It provides an introduction to the topic, giving an overview of what has and hasn't changed. Changes include a few that directly address reinsurance and others that indirectly result from changes to direct accounting and the existing ties between reinsurance and direct accounting.

Description: As an addendum to a July 2022 article, this article restates the formulas then presented for a framework to measure the reinsured portion of a direct loss from capping a net premium ratio or flooring a liability. The article corrects a flaw in one of the original formulas and shows, by example, how the framework can be applied to a specific application of reinsurance accounting.

Description: In this session, the presenters will discuss implementation challenges with US GAAP Long Duration Targeted Improvements (LDTI) for life and annuity products, and methods and changes to actuarial models their organizations use to overcome the challenges. Presenters will specifically discuss the following topics: The current GAAP reporting framework can create challenges with transparency for annuity insurers. Many annuity insurers report on adjusted earning measures in addition to US GAAP, believing the adjusted measures more accurately reflect earnings. Using a variable annuity framework, presenters will discuss key differences between GAAP and adjusted earnings measures, key challenges and their solutions for LDTI implementation, and the potential for LDTI to reduce the need for adjusted earnings measures and increase transparency. For FAS 60 based life products, insurers need to update and modernize the assumption setting process. Presenters will cover methods and the decision process whether to use existing data or new experience studies to review product experience and set assumptions. There is a lack of clarity and guidance for development and implementation of LDTI in a reinsurance framework. For reinsured life products, LDTI guidance is clear on the direct side of the financial statements, but the guidance is less clear on reinsurance ceded values. Presenters will discuss methods and changes to actuarial financial models that are needed in order to ensure the direct and ceded values are consistent.

Description: The paper discusses the role of a regulatory actuarial auditor, the risk focused examination process and the policyholder protection provided by the states, and the impact of varying state laws on the valuation process, and the importance of avoiding actuarial software becoming a black box. There is a discussion of the potential problems presented by the potential use of artificial intelligence, as well as suggestions for academic researchers to answer the pressing questions of whether artificial intelligence can potentially be used for valuation purposes.

Description: We will determine the role of risk function in evaluating operational risks associated with the implementation of LDTI and any system conversions. Are all models validated by the risk function before they are productionalized and results used by management to make business decisions? Does the risk function play a part in to assist finance, actuarial and investor relations in communicating changes and volatility resulting from LDTI? If not, should it? We will articulate the role that risk functions play in being part of large transformation from the start as a stakeholder/input provider to subsequently being an independent reviewer (i.e., second Line of defense).

Description: Interest Maintenance Reserve ("IMR") has become a hot topic recently due to rising interest rates, causing decreases or even negative IMR balances for some insurers. This article aims to exam some new questions facing financial reporting actuaries: - How should negative IMR be treated for statutory reporting? - What are the other actuarial implications of negative IMR? - What have regulators done and/or plan to do about negative IMR? - What are potential mitigants?

Description: In the United States, there has been much industry discussion of the challenges associated with a sustained low interest rate environment, which impacts both the asset and liability sides of the balance sheet in unfavorable ways. The intent of this article is not to focus on these strategic issues. Rather, we attempt to shine a spotlight on some of the modeling challenges that practicing actuaries may experience when incorporating negative interest rates into their models.

Description: S&P Global released its initial version of proposed changes regarding its Insurer Risk-Based Capital Adequacy methodology and assumptions on Dec. 6th, 2021. Unlike prior guidance notes or criteria releases, the proposed changes comprehensively updated the current S&P rating criteria released in 2010. These updates would directly impact many insurers. S&P Global anticipates that 10 percent of existing ratings in the insurance sector would be impacted and the change would lead to more positive rating implications than negative impact. This article focuses on the proposed changes on the S&P risk-based capital (RBC) vs. the current model, then simulate impacts to a representative U.S. life insurer through an illustrative case study.

Description: In this article, we explore key insights from Oliver Wyman's 2020 Life PBR Emerging Practices Survey, which provides a broad industry perspective with more than 50 companies participating representing 95 percent of the individual life market (by written premium). Insights include the impact of PBR on reserves and profitability in addition to emerging practices related to product design, assumption development, and methodology decisions.