Description: Discusses the severe adverse effects on U.S. capital markets that will occur due to the passage of FAS 115, which requires marking certain assets to market without a corresponding adjustment to liabilities.

Description: Traditionally, life insurance companies have depended on individual whole life insurance policies for their growth in assets. This has changed in recent years. Now, annuities, particularly individual annuities, have become the largest part of new individual premiums. Companies have responded by issuing a plethora of imaginative products. These are often founded on a variety of recently developed financial instruments, such as derivatives. This article is about the Actuarial Foundation's study of the risks of these new annuity products and the new financial instruments underlying them. The study will culminate in a scientific conference in New York in December 1998.

Description: This article is about a seminar held on October 30, 1997 to discuss mortality improvement in the NAFTA countries and the impact of such improvements on the financing and benefit adequacy of the countries’ individual social security systems. The gathering of about 80 researchers from a variety of disciplines served as a type of summit meeting on the NAFTA countries’ mortality projections. The seminar was Phase 2 of a three-phase SOA research project, 'Impact of Mortality Improvement on Social Security: Canada, Mexico, and the United States.' The project is intended to provide some guidance for appropriate governmental bodies to use in determining future financing and benefit needs for social security. It is sponsored by the SOA, The Actuarial Foundation [formerly the SOA Foundation], the Retirement Research Foundation, the American Society of Pension Actuaries, the social security administration of each NAFTA country, and the Pension Research Council.

Description: This article describes activities of the Board of Governors to strengthen the role of research within the SOA. The Board actions include approving two additional professional staff positions for the Research Department and including $150,000 in a Research Development Fund to serve as seed money for research projects.

Description: A discussion about the possible future effects of AIDs/HIV on the life insurance industry.

Description: The author describes immunization with a simple illustration requiring only high school algebra rather than the ordinary and stochastic calculus that has been applied to this subject. It illustrates that if you have three invesmtents with different durations, we can take some combination of any two of them to get the same duration as the third.

Description: This article highlights the research projects under review by the Research Policy Committee. It also invites submission of other projects with the caveat that ideas submitted without an offer of partial or complete funding will have a lower priority level.

Description: This article notes that the SOA has been accepted as an affiliate member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science AAAS. The author believes this affiliation helps support the concept of an actuary being both a business person and a scientist.

Description: Article from The Actuary, October 1998 – volume 32 - Issue 5: Individual savings, or accumulation, products include single premium deferred annuities, single premium life insurance, separate accounts, and others. This article describes a conference on these types of products that was held in January 1999.

Description: I recently was privileged to represent the Society of Actuaries in Holland at the 100th anniversary celebration of the Dutch Actuarial Society. I’m not going to do a travelogue telling you how friendly the people are. Rather, I want to bring two important matters to your attention. First, the whole world is involved in the business we think of as particularly ours.