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

Description: This paper will examine why CSR defunding produces pricing uncertainty and how regulators can alleviate these risks when insurers price 2020 premiums.

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: Impact investing is investments in “companies, organizations and funds with the intention to generate social impact alongside a financial return”.

Description: We discussed impacts of procrastination and strategies to harness the power of inertia to aid individuals in their pursuit of future financial well-being.

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: The Society of Actuaries (SOA) and the LIMRA Secure Retirement Institute are pleased to present the results of new research on the retirement market in China.

Description: We discussed impacts of procrastination and strategies to harness the power of inertia to aid individuals in their pursuit of future financial well-being.

Description: The Human Mortality Database is a unique open‐access collection of detailed mortality and population data for 38 countries.

Description: The appeal of the actuarial profession to women.

Description: The financial sector should provide financial security and allocate capital well. As its preeminent professionals actuaries have particular responsibilities.

Description: The excess capacity that has triggered structural reinsurance market shifts has companies focusing on uninsured and underinsured exposures to tackle the issue.

Description: Read the September 2016 issue of Pension Section News published by the The Pension Section. Newsletters provide practical information for the working actuary, articles on trends that impact sections and news about section activities.

Description: The article discusses the sustainability of the ACA individual market from a public entitlement standpoint. A key point of measuring sustainability is the reliance on market forces rather than federal budget constraints. The article explains why an actuarial viewpoint of sustainability is necessary to a greater extent than other public assistance and social insurance programs. The article challenges actuaries to be a bold, objective voice in a space that is full of opinionated but often uninformed viewpoints.

Description: Hear from the chairperson on themes in the September 2016 issue of Pension Section News published by the The Pension Section.

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: The SOA provides information about the actuarial career path in health care and predictive analytics. Throughout 2016, we will share more about actuaries who are tackling some of the industry's biggest challenges and hear from top employers in healthcare analytics.

Description: Metadata for entire issue

Description: Adaptive Risk Management harnesses social intelligence to identify emerging risks. We have entered an age of disruption where exponential technologies are transforming every industry. The ability to pivot in a rapidly evolving ecosystem is essential. Centralized “predict and control” paradigms will increasingly fail as complex interactions drive phase transitions. Successful organizations will harness social intelligence to “sense and respond” to giant waves of change. Maps amplify intelligence to help us navigate challenging terrain. Maps play a central role in all command centres, enabling rapid risk identification with a shared visual language. Interactive financial network maps allow analysts to explore and diagnose systemic fragilities, and mitigate critical vulnerabilities. Dynamic financial maps can also build visual intuition to detect escalating risk patterns. After observing early warning signals, analysts can apply network analytics to estimate likely second order effects. This allows organizations to proactively manage emerging risk before tipping points are crossed.

Description: Adaptive Risk Management harnesses social intelligence to identify emerging risks. We have entered an age of disruption where exponential technologies are transforming every industry. The ability to pivot in a rapidly evolving ecosystem is essential. Centralized “predict and control” paradigms will increasingly fail as complex interactions drive phase transitions. Successful organizations will harness social intelligence to “sense and respond” to giant waves of change. Maps amplify intelligence to help us navigate challenging terrain. Maps play a central role in all command centres, enabling rapid risk identification with a shared visual language. Interactive financial network maps allow analysts to explore and diagnose systemic fragilities, and mitigate critical vulnerabilities. Dynamic financial maps can also build visual intuition to detect escalating risk patterns. After observing early warning signals, analysts can apply network analytics to estimate likely second order effects. This allows organizations to proactively manage emerging risk before tipping points are crossed.

Description: A review of product and sales trends for variable, indexed and fixed annuities against the current backdrop of low interest rates and record equity market valuations

Description: January issue of International News

Description: Health Watch, Issue 79, December 2015, Health Watch

Description: The next evolution of actuarial systems in the U.S. will likely be a move toward a single system solution. This article defines a single system solution and illustrates how models can be shared across actuarial functions, the potential benefits of a single system solution, and describes potential mitigation strategies to address typical actuarial concerns.

Description: After a summary of FASB decisions in their GAAP Targeted Improvements project, this article describes several issues that will need to be resolved either by the board or in actuarial practice and argues for seeking solutions that provide meaningful results without overly complicating valuation processes.

Description: Review of 2015 from perspective of the Health Section

Description: The Stepping Stone issue 60, November 2015

Description: Terra Brasis Re is a local multi-line Brazilian Reinsurance company operating since 2012. Terra Report is a comprehensive report that analyses and provides insightful comments regarding the Brazilian reinsurance market on a quarterly basis both in English and Portuguese. It is akin to a financial report provided by the Investment houses on specific industries and Terra Report has received high praise both within Brazil and internationally. The SOA Newsletter Reinsurance News recently interviewed Rodrigo on the development of this report.

Description: Provides an overview of special characteristics of private equity and infrastructure asset classes, based on the perspective of experienced investors

Description: A review of the development of multi-asset indices and their placement in fixed indexed annuities in the Unites States. This article covers the evolution of indexing and its impact on the annuity marketplace. It also summarizes the key factors underlying the proliferation of multi-asset indices with built-in volatility targets.

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: Using the recent West Africa Ebola outbreak as an example, the authors discuss several modeling approaches that can be useful for estimating pandemic risk.

Description: Fourth installment in an ongoing series of articles adapted from Michael Carroll's "Awake at Work", applying Buddhist principles to the challenges faced by actuaries. This installment examines the often chaotic work circumstances faced by actuaries and encourages the reader to see such situations as opportunities for personal and professional growth.

Description: French language version of Risk Management, August 2014 newsletter.

Description: Complete issue of the August 2014 Risk Management newsletter.

Description: In this article, the authors discuss “tail events,” market dislocations deemed a priori, to be statistically improbable.

Description: Highlights of the 2013 initiatives and accomplishments of the Society of Actuaries.

Description: Congress once again turns to defined benefit pension plans as a misguided source for financing programs that have nothing to do with retirement.

Description: The author explores research and concerns about sustainability, and how actuaries can contribute to the discussion.

Description: Interview with Peter Schaefer, CEO of Hannover Life Reassurance Company of America.

Description: The article is a case study of various actuarial concepts invovled in the design and implementtion of the AQC - a global budget provider payment arrangement implemented by Blue Cross Blue Shield of MA.

Description: In summary, the goal of this report is to foster better industry-wide education, training and practice that decreases the future range and scope of what leading risk management professionals will henceforth label as being unpredictable as events now commonly thought to be so.

Description: The March 2013 issue of Reinsurance News

Description: This paper aims to help financial and insurance practitioners better recognize, assess, and respond to large scale, large impact, rare events (LSLIRE’s) which are occurrences currently often wrongly labeled as being unpredictable black swans. A black swan, as Nassim Taleb defines it in his popular book, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, Random House & Penguin (2007-2010 2nd. Ed.) is 1) an outlier event, which 2) carries extreme impact, and 3) “makes us concoct explanations for its occurrence after the fact.” Elsewhere, Taleb says it is unpredictable, which is why people concoct explanations. Other people use the term in many and various ways, to enfold events missed by most people because they are rare, missed by computer models and/or experts, and to include events they simply seem personally to have misunderstood. The paper also discusses building better ways to assess such events’ background characteristics, emergence dynamics, logics, and other foreseeable attributes. A secondary focus is educating practitioners to better respond - whether to limit damage or to take advantage of - the opportunities that arise from what others are likely to miss or misjudge during and after the emergence of LSLIRE (AKA black swan) events.

Description: This article focuses on these Key Points - The Situation: Mortality Improvement assumption is not a simple equation. What Could Happen: Any mortality improvement assumption is a bit of a ‘bet’ relative to the ongoing penetration of known developments and the introduction of new developments, such as the appearance of the AIDS epidemic. What Needs to Happen: Better understanding of Mortality Improvement assumption, final assumption, and best estimate approach.

Description: ERM and Investment strategies for healthcare companies

Description: This research scorecard will keep section members informed about research projects sponsored or co-sponsored by the Financial Reporting Section.

Description: This paper is a concept for U.S. pension reform.

Description: This article gives the highlights of the 88-page report including detailed assumptions for products including universal life with secondary guarantees (ULSG), cash accumulation universal life (CashAccum), current assumption universal life (CAUL), indexed universal life (IUL) and variable universal life (VUL). The 29 companies and 83 products represented in the report allow for an interesting perspective on premium persistency assumptions used in pricing, cash flow testing (CFT) and generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP)/international financial reporting standard (IFRS) functions. This article covers some general results and ULSG-specific results.

Description: Interview with Paul E. Rutledge III, FSA & CEO of SCOR Global Life Americas

Description: Risk management and capital budgeting are two critical components of the corporate decision process. They often need to be considered jointly at the corporate level because of their natural interaction through the dependent risk exposures and other synergetic relationships within an intricate corporate structure in a dynamic business environment. . This paper develops an integrated framework that aligns these two important corporate strategies across business divisions to optimize the streamlined enterprise strategic goal in a multi-period setting. The proposed integrated framework can serve as a practical guideline for corporate executives to optimally coordinate capital budgeting and risk management at the enterprise level.

Description: The paper discusses the arguments supporting the need for risk culture to transition into ERM culture to be embedded across financial organizations. Creating and maintaining strong ERM culture is paramount to a lasting and meaningful ERM program. It is essential for organizations to understand what ERM culture is, how it gets established and in what way affects the process of ERM implementation. Often, the implications of financial enterprises not focusing on the significance of ERM culture manifested in severely compromised ability to generate sustainable value and market competitive advantage. This paper calls for rethinking the role of ERM culture in the context of managing risks.

Description: Teaching enterprise risk management ERM in higher educational institutions as a mainstream subject is emerging. Risk management is traditionally taught in disciplinary silos without considering the multidimensional aspects of risk necessary to steer the entire business. This study identifies and focuses on the essential elements to develop a curriculum of ERM from a multidisciplinary perspective. The purpose of this article is to outline the contents of an ERM unit for academic business degrees. The article includes the author’s view and experience in designing and delivering an ERM unit for a postgraduate finance and risk management degree at his current academic affiliation. Presented at 2010 Enterprise Risk Management Symposium, Society of Actuaries, April 12-15, 2010.

Description: A proposal to reform current health care market, from a 'preferred payer' system, in which Medicare and Medicaid pay less than the true cost while others must then pay more, to a 'value for money' system. This would be achieved by requiring providers to bill all patients the same rate for the same services, with a standard bundling format to make all providers' rate differences transparent. Differences between billed charges and what Medicare pays would be made up by the Medicare patient, rather than subsidized by those outside of Medicare.

Description: Article discussing methods to manage conflict in the workplace or elsewhere.

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

Description: An essay discussing universal access to high quality, low cost health care.

Description: The paper focuses on value creation for European health insurance companies through the practical application of integrated ERM frameworks.

Description: Describes the current enterprise risk management, ERM, model for beginners.

Description: The future for risk management is bright. Regulators and managers are recognizing the importance of risk management as a way to minimize losses and improve business performance.

Description: CEOs of four of the world's leading life reinsurance companies discuss their views on the directions in which the life reinsurance industry is heading. Topics include an explanation of how changes in the world are impacting reinsurers and what actions are being taken by reinsurers to deal with these changes. From the 2002 Record of Society of Actuaries, Volume 28, No. 3. Session 107I of the Boston Annual Meeting.

Description: Panelists provide: [1] a summary of legal issues and recent federal court cases regarding employee and retiree benefit plans, and [2] discussion of three research papers providing new thought and insight involving the perspective of many disciplines about the aging population and changing family structures in the U.S. and around the world. From the 2002 Record of Society of Actuaries, Volume 28, No. 2. Session 143TS of the San Francisco Spring Meeting.

Description: Ten predictions for the future of reinsurance.

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: Actuaries are trained to measure and manage risks, for example, mortality, morbidity, interest rate, and asset default risks. However, the range of risks to which companies are exposed is wider than is sometimes considered. This complex array of risks needs to be managed holistically in concert and not in isolation. The actuary is increasingly called upon to assist in this process and needs a broader perspective and more powerful toolkit. From the Record of the Society of Actuaries, Volume 26, No. 3: Chicago Annual Meeting, October 15-18, 2000, Session 54PD.

Description: Panelists report on the status of activities by national associations in regard to risk-based capital requirements for health insurers. From the Record of the Society of Actuaries, Vol. 24, No. 2.

Description: Discussion of the skills actuaries need going forward to be successful, and hence, incorporated into the new actuarial exam syllabus.

Description: Editorial regarding the diverse forces affecting the life insurance industry.

Description: Panelists were members of the Actuary of the Future/Future of the Actuary Task Force of the Society of Actuaries [SOA]. They discussed the topics in their report to the SOA Board of Governors that related to a description of the current profession, the demand for actuaries in the 21st Century, what actuaries will be doing in the 21st Century, and implications for the selection, education, and training of actuaries. From the 1988 Record of Society of Actuaries, Vol. 14, No. 4B.

Description: Panelists discuss the impact that technological advances – especially advances in computer technology – have had on society and the insurance industry in particular. They also consider the impact such advances in the future will have on the job of the actuary. From the 1987 Record of Society of Actuaries, Vol. 13, No. 4B.

Description: Presented at October 1986 Annual Meeting. Discusses the reasons for substantial changes in life insurance pricing philosophy in recent years and their impact on actuaries and companies both now and in the future.

Description: Presented at June 1985 Spring Meeting. This session discussion is about: Changes in demographics and work forces composition, Trends towards defined contribution and flexible benefits programs, Lifestyle and attitude changes, Retiree medical care coverage.