Description: Encourages readers to visit specified URL to read selected essays from “Life Insurance 2020 Foresight—A Call For Essays.

Description: This article provides actuaries with general information about the Oregon Death with Dignity Act and experience for pricing of life and other insurance products.

Description: An interview with Joe Gilmour to share his views on the future innovations in underwriting that will help grow the individual life insurance business.

Description: Article Description * “Agile” development is all the buzz in the IT world. You may have heard your IT teams talk about scrums, sprints, and the war room and wondered if they were playing a strange new sport. Or perhaps you are already applying agile techniques in your product development. This article will discuss what agile methodology is, pros and cons, and how you might apply it to insurance product development.

Description: The Canadian Institute of Actuaries CIA recently updated its studies of lapse experience under universal life UL level cost of insurance COI and term-to-100 T100 policies. These studies can help U.S. actuaries set lapse assumptions for other lapse-supported products where no or little ultimate lapse experience exists, such as return of premium ROP term and UL with no lapse guarantees. The financial implications of overestimating ultimate lapse rates for these products can be significant.

Description: Against the backdrop of low interest rates, rapidly expanding data analytic capabilities, and increased consumer demand for better products, many life insurers struggle to innovate their product development initiatives. RGA conducted an online survey in the third quarter of 2018, asking 30 leading life insurance companies in Japan to identify current and future product development trends. A complementary survey of approximately 4,800 policyholders of life products in Japan was also completed in 2018. The findings highlight the product trends for risk, savings and living benefit products being developed, the market segments being targeted, and how insurers are differentiating product offerings through unique features and value-added services. Companies indicated they focused new product development efforts on substandard and standard risk segments, with only 20% pursuing the preferred market. Respondents indicated the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) being used to measure successful product development are predominantly topline – premium, face amount and number of policies.

Description: This article explores implications for the future of improving the application of existing underwriting techniques and and taking maximum advantage of new technologies.

Description: A discussion of the hidden costs of bringing innovative products to market, including the costs of expertise gaps and opportunity costs

Description: Federal Tax Issues Under the 2001 CSO Mortality Tables