Description: Learn about the industrial practice for constructing the mortality table from 0 to 1 through journeys in Hong Kong and Singapore, including key takeaways. Hear speakers share their biggest challenges during their process, how they resolved them, and discover the most common technical issues faced in conducting the mortality tables.

Description: A paper demonstrating how to obviate the need for market timing strategies in variable annuity products by judicious use of product design. The paper presents the premise behind the product design, provides numerical examples, then explores possible extensions of the concept to produce more sophisticated variable annuity plans based on guarantees of investment outcomes.

Description: Read this Chairperson's Corner for the March 2024 issue of International News to learn more about planned meetings and upcoming events.

Description: This article takes a look at how defined benefit (DB) pension plan financials ended the third quarter of 2023 on a solid footing, improving the capacity to take meaningful de-risking actions; as DB plans look to de-risk at reasonable costs, they may find it beneficial to consider a broad range of investment options; and completing a core bond allocation with private credit and income-oriented alternative strategies can help achieve important savings over other frequently pursued de-risking approaches, without materially increasing the funded status volatility or downside risk

Description: This article highlights the findings of a recent SOA survey on accelerated underwriting (AU) practices, including the amount of AU business ceded, the results of three opinion questions, and an estimate of mortality slippage among AU programs.

Description: Review of paper describing Collective Defined Contribution Plans. the elimination of traditional pensions by many companies have left employees without easy access to reliable retirement income Collective Defined Contribution plans which are used to a small extent in the US but more broadly used elsewhere offer an option for consideration.

Description: Article presents the basic terminology and theory of attribution theory, the theory explaining the causes that people attribute their successes and failures to. The article reviews i) typical attributions(e.g. effort, luck), ii) dimensions of attribution (controllability, stability), iii) useful and non-useful attributions, and iv) attribution retraining and v) other aspects of the theory (such as accompanying emotions)

Description: An interview with Michelle Richter-Gordon which provides a look at how DC participants feel about their financial security in retirement and suggests how retirement professionals can improve the financial security of retirees during the decumulation phase.

Description: The mismatch between how interest rate impacts the value of assets and liabilities could have material negative impact to companies’ earnings and surplus. To quantify and mitigate the impact of such mismatches, companies have used matching a combination of duration and convexity. I will review these measurement techniques and their limitations.

Description: The Society of Actuaries (SOA) Board of Directors (Board) gathered in Chicago March 16–17 for its first meeting of the year. Among key topics on the agenda were the FSA pathway evolution update, Board elections, strategic planning and the use of AI in the workforce.