Description: Read the December 2018 issue of Risk Management published by the Joint Risk Management Section. Newsletters provide practical information for the working actuary, articles on trends that impact sections and news about section activities.

Description: Read the December 2018 issue of Risk Management published by the Joint Risk Management Section. Newsletters provide practical information for the working actuary, articles on trends that impact sections and news about section activities.

Description: Read the October 2018 issue of Health Watch, published by the Health Section. Practical information for actuaries, articles impact sections, section activities.

Description: Asia is experiencing changing demographic, social, and cultural tides which threaten to submerge existing retirement-pension systems.

Description: Read the August 2018 issue of Risk Management published by the Joint Risk Management Section. Newsletters provide practical information for the working actuary, articles on trends that impact sections and news about section activities.

Description: The article explores the possibility of using the emerging technology for life insurers to build a monitor system for better risk and profitability management.

Description: This article will focus on introducing where IFRS17 differs from US GAAP conceptually, and key aspects of this paradigm shift from actuaries’ perspective.

Description: Read the French language version of the March 2018 issue of Risk Management published by the Joint Risk Management Section. Newsletters provide practical information for the working actuary, articles on trends that impact sections and news about section activities.

Description: Read the March 2018 issue of Risk Management published by the Joint Risk Management Section. Newsletters provide practical information for the working actuary, articles on trends that impact sections and news about section activities.

Description: Read the February 2018 issue of Health Watch, published by the Health Section. Practical information for actuaries, articles impact sections, section activities.

Description: Read the Sept. 2017 issue of Small Talk published by Smaller Insurance Company Section. Practical information on trends that impact sections and activities.

Description: A description of how auditors or examiners can evaluate whether PBR reserves are adequate and reasonable.

Description: Read the June 2017 issue of Health Watch, published by the Health Section. Practical information for actuaries, articles impact sections, section activities.

Description: Models are useful in illustrating various facets of complex phenomena, but they are inherently limited.

Description: The standard for measuring retirement income adequacy has been the final earnings replacement rate (usually targeted at 70%). But - does it work?

Description: Different points of view about IFRS are explained.

Description: Read the March 2017 issue of Health Watch, published by the Health Section. Practical information for actuaries, articles impact sections, section activities.

Description: A status update on research projects sponsored or co-sponsired by the Financial Reporting Section.

Description: Formulas for changes in GAAP liabilities and liability accrual rates are shown for three assumption update methods—retrospective, prospective and immediate.

Description: A description of current council member areas of responsibility, Life & Annuity Symposium sessions to be sponsored, and other future projects.

Description: Read the March 2017 issue of Small Talk published by Smaller Insurance Company Section. Practical information on trends that impact sections and activities.

Description: A discussion on how to use data visualization for model controls.

Description: Summary of the NAIC and SOA's PBR Survey.

Description: Update on IASB Activities during the last quarter of 2016.

Description: Proposes an approach to develop dynamic assumptions for living benefits using a combination of available experience data and predictive modeling techniques.

Description: A question from a reading regarding the accuracy of a comment from the December 2016 issue of The Financial Reporter article titled “Negative GAAP Term Insurance Reserves—to Floor or Not to Floor?”

Description: A discussion of the FASB's Sept. 29, 2016 issued exposure draft on targeted improvements to accounting for long- duration insurance contracts.

Description: This article explores the methods of determining the optimal timing for risk management projects.

Description: Read the December 2016 issue of Risk Management published by the Joint Risk Management Section. Newsletters provide practical information for the working actuary, articles on trends that impact sections and news about section activities.

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

Description: Many risk management decisions involve the timing of implementing risk strategies. The cost of hedging, capital raising and securitization changes with the economic environment. The timing of de-risking and investment in new risk management functions affect the cost and benefit of these projects as well. Like investment timing, it is important to consider the timing in risk management decisions to maximize the gain of risk management projects. This paper discusses methods of determining the appropriate timing of implementing a risk management strategy or investing in risk management projects. It explains the human biases that may lead to inferior timing decisions. It also covers the costs and benefits of risk management projects and the impact of new information on the decision-making process. Timing considerations for financial risk hedging, insurance risk hedging and investment in new risk management projects are explained. Factors used for timing decisions include economic conditions, market volatility, credit rating, borrowing cost, capital adequacy and financial resources.

Description: Reviews basic desirable features in an economic scenario generator. Discusses basics of model structure and validation process

Description: Highlights a new research paper on determining discount rates for pension plans, by John Turner. The paper breaks new ground on deciding on the appropriate discount rate for untradeable benefit obligations, with a comprehensive summary of the field.

Description: Read the August 2016 issue of Risk Management published by the Joint Risk Management Section. Newsletters provide practical information for the working actuary, articles on trends that impact sections and news about section activities.

Description: A review of the Bridging the Gap Series: Application of Predictive Modeling in VA/FIA Risk Management at the Equity Based Guarantees Conference in Chicago.

Description: The April 2016 Issue of The Modeling Platform

Description: The article explores impact of resetting cap vs static cap choice for the GLWB rider for a Fixed Index Annuity for a Point to Point. Moreover, analysis of a Monthly Sum Cap is provided showing impacts of particular choices of market models (e.g. Black, Heston, Bates) used to price this deal.

Description: The authors explore a new approach to the premium persistency assumption in universal life products.

Description: New Zealand is about to launch its first variable annuity with guaranteed lifetime withdrawal benefits. The product design is mindful of the lessons from the financial crisis in the United States, Europe and Japan.

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

Description: Looks at free and inexpensive resources for the novice in predictive analytics, covering the data analysis theory as well as the most commonly used languages/software used in the field.

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: In physics and engineering education, Fermi problems require solutions based on good approximate calculations with little or no actual data, involving making justified guesses and deducing bounds without using sophisticated tools. The idea of Fermi problems are of particular relevance to today's actuaries, as pricing, reserving, and financial reporting involve more and more complex stochastic components. The paper discusses some approximate solutions developed in academia in the spirit of Fermi problems.

Description: Decomposes guaranteed minimum maturity benefit option into a basket of components, and values each component with both a Black-Scholes model and a regime-switching GARCH model. Performs sensitivity analysis on dynamic lapse assumption.

Description: Introducing tools to help actuaries explain non-traditional DAC and SOP reserve movements no non-actuarial audiences.

Description: This paper presents the output of in-house research on an emerging area of risk appetite management and our global implementation best practices. It intends to provide readers with detail implementation of risk appetite framework and assessment across an organization. It provides the conceptual risk appetite framework based model- developed by the author, implementation plan, and global best practices of a risk appetite assessment across an organization. It identifies the challenges and exceptions in the risk appetite assessment with an approach to manage it effectively, and helps organizations with cost-benefit analysis. It also includes an illustrative case study.

Description: A common approach to estimating the total amount of savings required to fund retirement is to first apply a generic “replacement rate” to pre-retirement income, such as 80%, to get the desired retirement income need. That need is then assumed to increase annually at the rate of inflation for the duration of retirement, which is generally assumed to be some fixed period, such as 30 years. Using government data along with a fairly simple market and mortality model, we explore these assumptions to more accurately estimate the true cost of retirement

Description: The percentage of the population who are obese has grown dramatically worldwide over the last several decades, although stabilizing recently in the United States. Studies have found the effects on mortality to be inconsistent and controversial because of methodological differences and the complexity of the relationship between obesity and mortality. This paper discusses this relationship and sheds light on the likely effects of this epidemic. Issues associated with the so-called obesity-mortality paradox, where mortality experience is lower for those individuals who are overweight and in some who are obese compared with the mortality of those in the normal weight category, are examined. Although certain recently reported studies of the relationship between mortality and obesity indicate that obesity is related to a reduced percent of additional mortality, this may in part be due to the shorter average time that those currently obese have been exposed to their condition. Nevertheless, the amount of health care costs and rates of disability associated with being obese are significant, contributing to the increase in overall health care costs as they become more numerous and age. Although obesity is being addressed with a great deal of activity and publicity, they will continue to prove challenging for individuals and society to manage and overcome.

Description: Interviews with several actuaries who are subject matter experts in the health field to get their perspectives on implementing the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

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

Description: This article discussed the NEAT family of neural network algorithms. NEAT automatically determines the number of hidden neurons, as well as their structure. Additionally HyperNEAT can scale to very large problem domains.

Description: A book review by Scott McInturff of The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail - But Some Don't authored by Nate Silver.

Description: The U.K. Pension Protection Fund (PPF) was established in April 2005 to protect the pensions of members of U.K. private sector defined benefit pension schemes that have insufficient assets and whose corporate sponsor fails. The Fund takes over the pension scheme assets and assumes responsibility for the payment of compensation to the former members of the scheme. The PPF is funded by a levy on the population of eligible schemes. To improve its ERM framework, the PPF has undertaken a reverse stress testing exercise. This analysis provided the organization with new insights into its risk profile, the scenarios leading to the PPF’s potential “failure,” and interactions between these scenarios. This paper discusses the principles and objectives of reverse stress testing in the special case of the PPF and then illustrates the application of complex system science techniques for the purpose of reverse stress testing.

Description: Introduction to option pricing using Black-Scholes. Discussion on the limitations of Black-Scholes and of its alternatives such as Heston. Clear, accessible explanation of key results of mathematical finance including risk-neutral valuation.

Description: This article explores reasons for plan sponsors to consider lump-sum payouts. The author suggests for plan sponsors looking to reduce risk, the factors outlined in the article suggest that sponsors may benefit from considering risk-transfer opportunities much sooner than they may have anticipated.

Description: Investment volatility can lead to unacceptable levels of contribution volatility and wide swings in a retirement plan’s perceived funded status. This paper approaches the volatility problem from a plan design perspective.

Description: Introduction to option pricing, with special attention to issues in applying these tools to price equity-linked insurance products. Clear, accessible explanation of key results of mathematical finance including risk-neutral valuation.

Description: A risk map is an effective and dynamic tool in helping companies develop a broader view of their risks.

Description: Explanation of Medicare Advantage STAR rating program as it relates to payment rates for MA bids. Also describes important features of the program from an actuarial perspective, how the components of the STAR rating are calculated and implications and considerations for actuaries.

Description: Global financial crises like the one recently experienced, affected both large and small institutions.Today, when there is heightened need for enhanced risk management tools, some entities are unable to employ sophisticated mechanisms due to limited data availability. Moreover, from the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision’s point of view via Basel II and Basel III, the internal ratings- based (IRB) approach requires that institutions have some reliable estimates of default probabilities of default for each rating grade. Taking the work of previous researches a step further, this paper intends to propose a new dynamic mechanism to for the risk management industry for to calculateing probabilities of default (PD). Through these estimates for the core model, we generate implied probability of default (PD) through actuarial estimation tools and different probability distributions. This mechanism is specialized to work best for low- defa ult portfolios (LDPs). Furthermore, scenario testing is adopted to validate the model against any model- specific bias

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: Report of findings for Society of Actuaries research project on the financial reporting for insurance contracts under possible future international accounting standards. This project studies the modeling of Certain Life and Health Insurance and Annuity Products Offered by U.S. and Other Insurers for the Purpose of Measurement of Liabilities under the International Accounting Standards Board’s Exposure Draft on Insurance Contracts and U.S. GAAP

Description: Summary of recent SOA-sponsored research on Enterprise Risk Management practices as applied to health insurers, self-insured plans, and health finance professionals.

Description: This is an in-depth look at the root causes of the subprime mortgage crisis and ways actuaries can eliminate the problems. From the Actuary Magazine, April/May 2010 – Volume 7 Issue 2.

Description: U.K. life insurers writing participating business have, since the end of 2004, been required by their regulator, the Financial Services Authority FSA, to value their assets and liabilities on a market-consistent basis. The purpose of this paper is to explain the new valuation approach based on market-consistent values and its rationale set out the issues faced by life insurers in implementing the new regime and explain how these issues have been addressed by insurers.

Description: In 2007 the International Accounting Standards Board IASB released a discussion paper proposing a new accounting model for insurance contracts, known as the current exit value model. One aspect of the proposed accounting model is that claim liabilities would need to include explicit margins satisfying certain criteria. Currently it is common for U.S. medical insurers to include explicit margins in their claim liabilities. However, we demonstrate that the margin approach most commonly used today by U.S. medical insurers does not satisfy the objectives articulated in the IASB discussion paper regarding the role of margins. We then propose a new formula for including explicit margins in U.S. medical insurance claim liabilities in a manner that is more compatible with the principles articulated in the IASB discussion paper. Finally, we illustrate our proposed claim liability formula using an example drawn from real-life data.

Description: This is an article about the ups and downs of call centers as they relate to marketing. From News Direct, June 2007, Issue No. 56.

Description: This presentation from the Actuarial Research Conference of 2006 is an overview of Guaranteed Minimum Withdrawal Benefits. It briefly discusses pricing.

Description: In this paper we investigate three investment-consumption problems for a risk averse investor: i an investment only problem that involves utility from only terminal wealth, ii an investment-consumption problem that involves utility from only consumption, and iii an extended investment-consumption problem that involves utility from both consumption and terminal wealth. We model these problems under a multiperiod setup that incorporates three types of uncertainties: the economic environment uncertainty, the asset return uncertainty, and the mortality uncertainty. By using dynamic programming, analytical expressions of the optimal investment consumption strategies to these problems are derived. Some economic implications on these results are also discussed.

Description: This paper describes the use of the Moses software package to model variable annuities with multiple guarantees. Pricing and risk management are discussed.

Description: This is an article about claims and the growing impact they have on insurance companies financially.

Description: This is a highly interactive role-playing session detailing the actual product development process for a hypothetical health care product. From Record of Society of Actuaries, Vol. 30, No. 3, Session 19

Description: Slides from a panel discussion session at the Spring meeting of the Society of Actuaries held in San Antonio, Texas, June 14-15, 2004 Discussion of the basics of actuarial appraisals: Panelists discussed the reasons to perform an actuarial appraisal, the processes involved, issues that should be addressed and assumption development.