Description: The speaker will share his insights into the hedging challenges faced by FIA and VA business in the current market environment.

Description: An exploration of drivers, cohorts and dynamics for policyholder behavior for VA and FIA based on industry experience data, including changes in recent years and the emergence of long-term data in key areas. We will also discuss critical elements to developing a sustainable and coherent framework to translate this complex experience data into assumption models.

Description: The presenters in this session will show attendees how to measure surplus risk for a corporate pension plan (or a pension plan where liabilities are valued on a current marked to market yield curve) in several different ways, understand the value of each of those methods, and use the results to make decisions on relevant corporate pension actions such as asset allocation and pension risk transfer. They will also compare LDI strategies between corporate and public pension plans.

Description: The speaker of this session will provide a bottom up analysis and categorization of the $200 billion of volatility control funds related investments while recapping volatility control fund trading around volatility spikes (including Aug. 2015 and June 2016). The assessment of potential market impact of the volatility control funds’ rebalancing activity will also be discussed.

Description: An overview of the evolution of equity-based guarantees (e.g. VA, FIA, etc.) over the last few years and discussion the current lay of the land as it relates to the regulatory, issues, capital markets environment in which these products are offered.

Description: The speaker of this session will discuss some common difficulties one encounters when dealing with exotic equity linked derivatives. In particular, a study of a Monthly Sum Cap (MSC) will be presented. Pricing issues, along with dynamic hedging, as well as projections of MSC into the future will also be discussed. Time permitting, some aspects of historical performance will also be addressed

Description: Many retirement actuaries have experience developing, implementing, and monitoring Liability Driven Investing (LDI) strategies for plan sponsors. These strategies typically involve modifying a plan’s investment strategy to remove a significant portion of the investment and interest rate risk now or at some point in the future when specific triggers are met. The tactics often involve the use of fixed income assets to cash flow and/or duration match the liabilities. In the spirit of helping actuaries expand their roles in an evolving defined contribution world, this article explores the application of LDI and derisking strategies within defined contribution and individual retirement accounts. The economic theory behind this approach is called the lifecycle hypothesis, or lifecycle finance. The benefits of the lifecycle finance method are that it provides a safe approach to save for retirement and a secure source of floor income during retirement. Similar to pension plans, each individual has his or her own idiosyncratic needs, wants, and risks that should be considered. Actuaries are uniquely situated to help defined contribution plan sponsors, individuals, and even themselves implement the lifecycle finance approach by developing and distributing tools and methods that focus on income (rather than wealth), LDI strategies, and personalization.

Description: Legislative changes and the economic environment have created a need for plan sponsors to understand and manage pension risk and volatility. Dynamic asset allocation glidepaths reduce risk as plans become better funded. But what about the risk that plan sponsors face when their plans are underfunded? The presenters will discuss the challenges of managing pension risk when assets don't keep pace with liabilities.

Description: This paper uses stochastic simulation technology to present a risk metric for defined benefit pension plans that provides improved measures of the plan's solvency and provides a tool for pension plan managers to determine the value of risk mitigation activities. From 2006 Enterprise Risk Management Symposium, M-AS06-1.