Description: Future mortality improvement has been a common assumption in life insurance and annuity pricing and forecasting for many years. However, experience over the last decade suggests this might be an assumption that merits reconsideration in the United States. This article will take a closer look at factors that impact mortality improvement trends and discuss why insurers may want to reevaluate product designs to better manage the associated mortality risk. We then introduce a product idea with this in mind, where premiums are based on a life expectancy index and insurers share the risk (and opportunity) or mortality improvement with policyholders.

Description: An overview of how the VM-31 requirements for documenting PBR approaches and assumptions can/should reflect the Actuarial Standard of Practice on Modeling, ASOP No. 56

Description: This article is the final installment of our three-part series on economic scenario generators (“ESGs”). Part I and II were published in the November 2019 and August 2020 issues of The Modeling Platform. Part III contextualizes the framework for selecting, building, and validating ESGs and focuses on the Academy Interest Rate Generator (“AIRG”), the most commonly used real-world ESG for US actuaries

Description: With many complex regulatory changes on the horizon as well as pressures to ensure model accuracy from auditors, regulatory requirements and new actuarial standards of practice, the importance of robust model validation is coming to the forefront of actuaries’ minds. What was previously a day-two task for many companies is becoming just as important as model development! In this session, you will hear from those that have been deeply involved in building model validation frameworks and tools in responses to regulatory changes GAAP Long Duration Targeted Improvements (“LDTI”) and Principles Based Reserves (“PBR”).

Description: Institutional investors such as pension plans and insurance companies have enjoyed strong equity returns for a length of time with few historical precedents. Nearly a decade after the end of the financial crisis, strategies to provide downside protection remain expensive and the performance of traditional risk-managed funds has disappointed investors.

Description: The Smaller Insurance Company Section, the Committee on Life Insurance Research and the Product Development Section announce the release of a new report on the impact mortality credibility has on principle-based reserves.

Description: The Canadian Institute of Actuaries and Society of Actuaries Committee on Life Insurance Research, the Product Development Section and the Financial Reporting Section, sponsored this study investigating how the Canadian life insurance industry is utilizing predictive modelling.

Description: The Society of Actuaries are once again offering a seminar that investigates all aspects of life insurance, annuity and long term care product tax compliance. Developed by the Taxation Section, participants will be brought up-to-date on recent Internal Revenue Service (IRS) guidance and learn about the newest tax issues related to product design and administration. Legal, IRS and product development experts will provide vital insights into the challenges of developing and administering products within the requirements of the Internal Revenue Code (IRC), and allow ample opportunities for networking, questions and information exchange.

Description: This paper summarizes the results of a survey of waiver of premium/monthly deduction rider assumptions and experience.

Description: This research report is the result of a second phase examination of the impact of VM-20 on life insurance product development.

Description: This report explains the concept and construction of the Market Consistent Embedded Value (MCEV) measure, as well as its usefulness as a profit/risk measure relative to other profit/risk measures currently used by insurance companies for various products. The knowledge from this research will assist actuaries, corporate leadaers, risk management professionals and others in understanding, implementing and comparing MCEV to current risk assessment tools utilized by insurance companies.

Description: This paper discusses some of the models used to quantify risk, note some areas where improvements in standard methods are needed, and in some cases suggest alternative approaches for risks in Property and Casualty Insurance and Life Insurance.

Description: 2004 SOA Annual Meeting and Exhibit, New York. This discussion looked at individual life insurance and annuity products and the risks these guarantees carry, such as: 1. Extended maturity benefits. 2. Secondary guarantees. 3. Guaranteed insurability. 4. Guaranteed minimum living and death benefits in VA.

Description: Panelists at this session of the SOA 2003 Washington, DC Spring Meeting discuss how changes in interest rates affect the assets and liabilities of a life insurance company and what a company can do to prepare. This session examines historical trends in interest rates and how companies have reacted to both sudden and gradual changes.

Description: This paper expands on the traditional three-factor interest, mortality, and expenses dividend contribution formula to propose a new dividend structure. The structure and formula are derived from the most generalized equation of equilibrium, and each dividend class is treated as an ongoing microcosm. From Society of Actuaries Financial Reporting Monograph, M-AS99-1.

Description: 1999 Valuation Actuary Symposium, Los Angeles. This session focused on how the industry has responded to the financial management challenges associated with Equity-Indexed products. Topics included: 1. Investment hedging and market volatility. 2. Product modeling. 3. Participation rate competition. 4. Product evolution. 5. GAAP for Derivatives - FAS 133.

Description: 1996 Valuation Actuary Symposium. In this teaching session on liability modeling, the panelists discussed the key aspects of identifying and gathering the data required to construct models, the model building process including objectives and considerations, and the modeling process from the standpoint of policyholder and company behaviors.

Description: This paper explores the flexibility of kernel estimation as a means of nonparametric graduation and relates it to moving-weighted-average graduation. From Transactions of Society of Actuaries 1995, Vol. 47.

Description: 1992 SOA Regional Meeting, Anaheim. This session provided an update of current topics relating to individual life insurance. Subjects included: 1. Whole life products with a focus on par products from the marketplace point of view. 2. Financial factors impacting whole life products. 3. Guideline XXX and its impact on level term products. 4. Variable life insurance.

Description: This article reviews the significant changes to the AMT that will affect life insurance in the 1990s. The Actuary Vol. 24, No. 4

Description: This paper develops a theory for the valuation of some kinds of interest sensitive cash flows. A process is derived which takes as input, assumptions about the capital markets and policy holder behaviour, and produces as output interest and decrement assumptions which can be used for conventional actuarial discounting. The methodology is illustrated using some idealized, but tractable, models of conventional non-par whole life insurance. The method is also applied to a simple Universal Life plan. The paper concludes by considering some of the problems encountered when applying the ideas to more practical problems.

Description: This session from the 1984 SOA Toronto Meeting discusses rear end loaded universal life policies and the Canadian view on rear end loads on life and annuity policies. From Record of the Society of Actuaries Vol. 10, No. 4

Description: This paper extends the author's previous study, 'An Expanded Financial Structure for Ordinary Dividends', to reflect amendments to the life insurance company federal income tax statutes introduced by the Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 1982 [TEFRA]. From Transactions of Society of Actuaries 1983, Vol. 35.

Description: This 1980 session covers amendments to the SNL and SVL and the anticipated revision to the CSO Mortality Table. Questions discussed: 1. What changes can be expected in requirements in the1980's? 2. What changes in products design will likely emerge from these? 3. What will be the effect on future gross premium, cash value, and reserve levels? 4. Will these changes be compatible with all economic forecast scenarios? 5. Will these changes create a need for increased gross premium rates or for higher company surplus levels? 6. Should attention to solvency measures be increased? 7. Are the allowable valuation interest rates sufficiently liberal?

Description: This paper considers in more detail the differences between provisions necessary for nonparticipating and those necessary for participating adjustable life policies and will provide a possible means of designing nonparticipating policies that can adjust directly to future changes in mortality and interest valuation bases. A discussion of the paper follows. From Transactions of Society of Actuaries 1979, Vol 31.

Description: This 1978 panel discussion examined dividend philosophy. Topics covered: I. The appropriate basis of dividend illustrations 2. The professional responsibility of the actuary in the establishment of dividend scales and in dividend illustration practices 3. The need for professional opinions and guidelines concerning policyholder dividends and illustrations 4. The adequacy of the recommendations of the Committee on Dividend Philosophy in addressing current concerns. 5. Differences between the approach of the Cormnittee on Dividend Philosophy and the traditional approaches. 6. The development of dividends for participating products in stock companies.

Description: This paper includes three discussions. The first is about permanent type insurance used as a substitute for group term insurance. The second discussion is about long-term disability experience, offsets and underwriting. The third discussion is about medical care expense insurance including experience, trends, impact of Medicare and COB. From Transactions of Society of Actuaries 1968, Vol. 20 Pt. 2, No. 56