Description: Summary of the SOA's research report Modern Deterministic Scenarios for Interest Rates, which developed interest rate scenarios for use in cash flow testing.

Description: Synopsis of Issue Brief prepared by Tax Work Group of the Academy-LTD Claim Reserve Assumption Basis: Use of date of incurral/date of issue of original policy.

Description: A high level summary of developments of the new international accounting standard for insurance contracts (IFRS17) from the perspective of a general insurer.

Description: This is an update, as of July 2020, on projects in process and those recently completed sponsored by the Financial Reporting Section.

Description: This article describes a simple but powerful tool for use by valuation actuaries and auditors when evaluating current assumptions for use in GAAP net premium reserve methods that require retrospective updating for actual experience and assumption changes. As a supplement, this tool can fill some holes left by existing tools. It produces results that can be compared to materiality thresholds at any level of aggregation, from a single reserve cohort up to the combination of all cohorts for all products subject to retrospective net premium reserve requirements. It can also serve as a benchmarking tool for estimated the possible effects of an assumption change or to help in explaining the effects of an actual assumption change.

Description: Risk adjustment is needed under IFRS 17 to reflect the compensation that a company requires for bearing the uncertainty about the amount and timing of the cash flows that arises from non-financial risk. Companies are also required to disclose the method and confidence level used for the calculation of the RA. However, IFRS 17 doesn’t specify a method and a confidence level, nor does it provide a list of specific risks that are considered to be non-financial risk. Companies need to define them based on their own preferences or existing practices. This article will introduce available approaches and discuss the confidence level approach with potential consideration stemming from industry preferences and illustrative examples.

Description: Blazing the Path for a Unified Valuation System by David K. Sandberg from The Financial Reporter, June 2000, Issue No. 42.

Description: Tax code tidbits

Description: FASB's Statement of Financial Accounting Standards No. 97 contains wide-sweeping changes to the preparation of GAAP financials for insurance companies. The focus of this article will be on the ramifications of the interest rate FASB has decided to use to amortize deferred acquisition costs.

Description: The Actuary Vol. 22, No. 2. This article discusses how the the choice of basis for measuring Interest Rate Spread impacts pricing and accounting for interest sensitive products.