Description: Performance metrics are widely used by companies to create benchmarks, assess performance, and make strategic decisions. Traditional metrics, however, may not properly capture the risks embedded in complex or illiquid insurance liabilities, as recent global market volatility has revealed. As a result, executives are increasingly turning to risk-adjusted performance metrics (RAPMs) to enhance performance measurement. This article describes the shortcomings of traditional performance metrics and introduces some of the more commonly used RAPMs.

Description: This article recaps the formidable changes that have shaped the FIA market since its humble beginnings in the mid-1990s and offers a perspective on ten emerging developments to watch in 2014 and beyond.

Description: Answering the question: Do you think that genetic information is different, and if so, should insurers handle it differently from other medical information?

Description: The article talks about market consistent pricing, how risk neutral pricing and real world pricing are not fundamentally different if used appropriately. And using that knowledge, a rather new concept called the risk-adjusted real world pricing, which is a method where a mixture of risk neutral and real world pricing to achieve a holistic view on pricing, will be introduced.

Description: discussion of risk management and proper pricing of life insurance products.

Description: A discussion of risk-relevant resources available at the Society of Actuaries Risk Management Task Force Web site

Description: This article discusses the importance, measurement and improvement of product development efficiency.

Description: The sentinel effect in the underwriting process refers to the tendency for unhealthy individuals to apply for insurance coverage where testing is not performed. The article reports on evidence of the effect with respect to cocaine and tobacco use and HIV positive prevalence

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: Recent advances in mortality modeling have enabled applicant-specific quantification of mortality risk in life insurance applicants using laboratory and physical measurements. Relative to more conventional underwriting, this approach identifies a small population of significantly under-priced policy and a much larger, cross-subsidizing group whose risk is presently overestimated. Applicants placed in the highest percentile by this scoring methodology are more than 10X as likely to die in a given period as their demographic peers, and represent approximately 5% of short-term claims. Implications for product design are substantial in both the short- and long-term, as the possibilities for adverse selection grow, and the opportunity for fully individualized pricing raises the more distant prospect of products with as many rate classes as applicants.