Description: Provides an update, as of September 2022, on Financial Reporting Section sponsored research projects in process and those recently completed.

Description: This session series is sponsored by Hannover Re Session 2 - COVID-19: Financial Impacts and Re-shaping Risk and Capital Management Practices COVID-19 has posed significant challenges to health insurers and providers to meet profit targets and maintain strong balance sheets and capitalization levels. As a result, companies are facing an ever-increasing need to better integrate their risk and capital management practices across the enterprise and evaluate a broader set of tools to manage and optimize their capital and liquidity needs. This second session of the COVID-19 series will help you examine the financial impact that COVID-19 has had on the health industry and review how companies are evolving their financial and capital management practices to achieve their strategic goals. It will also outline how structured reinsurance has emerged as an increasingly utilized form of managing capital. By attending this session, you will be able to explain how COVID-19 has impacted the financial performance and capitalization of the health insurance industry, and will gain a basic understanding of alternative ways of managing and optimizing capital, including the use of structired reinsurance.

Description: In the time since the original proposal to move healthwriting companies from the blue blank to the orange blank, there have been several incremental updates to the blue blank by the NAIC Blanks Working Group to integrate portions of the orange blank into the blue blank. Meanwhile, the NAIC RBC Working Group has issued their proposal to change the health test for comment and appear to be moving forward with the proposal to revise the health test. This would obligate companies that write predominantly health business onto the orange blank rather than the blue blank, which they have historically used for reporting. Discover background of the revised health test, the incremental updates to the blue blank that have been implemented recently, additional incremental updates proposed for upcoming blue blanks, and the current status of the Health RBC Working Group proposal to revise the health test. Hear observations about companies that have opted to 'take the plunge' and move to the orange blank ahead of the revised health test as well as companies that have opted to remain on the blue blank and incrementally update as new requirements are integrated into the Blue blank. By attending the session, you will be able to: • Understand the context of the initiative to revise the NAIC health test. • Summarize the recent changes to the blue blank implemented by the Blanks Working Group that integrate portions of the orange blank into the blue blank. • Summarize the upcoming proposed changes to the blue blank by the Blanks Working Group that integrate additional portions of the orange blank into the blue blank. • Summarize the current status of the Health RBC Working Group proposal to revise the health test. • Provide industry perspective on companies that have opted to move to the orange blank ahead of the revised health test and companies that have opted to remain on the blue blank until the NAIC requires it.

Description: In the United States, there has been much industry discussion of the challenges associated with a sustained low interest rate environment, which impacts both the asset and liability sides of the balance sheet in unfavorable ways. The intent of this article is not to focus on these strategic issues. Rather, we attempt to shine a spotlight on some of the modeling challenges that practicing actuaries may experience when incorporating negative interest rates into their models.

Description: S&P Global released its initial version of proposed changes regarding its Insurer Risk-Based Capital Adequacy methodology and assumptions on Dec. 6th, 2021. Unlike prior guidance notes or criteria releases, the proposed changes comprehensively updated the current S&P rating criteria released in 2010. These updates would directly impact many insurers. S&P Global anticipates that 10 percent of existing ratings in the insurance sector would be impacted and the change would lead to more positive rating implications than negative impact. This article focuses on the proposed changes on the S&P risk-based capital (RBC) vs. the current model, then simulate impacts to a representative U.S. life insurer through an illustrative case study.

Description: This article highlights the fact that new requirements for disclosure of average liability duration and interest rates could lead to diversity in practice. It also recognizes that elements of the new disclosure requirements will enable financial statement users to perform their own crude estimates of these averages in ways that could help them to better understand the liabilities and to compare companies using consistent methods. Finally, the article describes how companies might also find value in such crude estimates.

Description: Internal audit (IA) projects typically focus on evaluating the risks and operational effectiveness of a company’s technological, regulatory/compliance, and/or financial processes and procedures. Because LDTI and IFRS 17 compliance will require extensive rewiring of existing and possibly the implementation of new processes and procedures to comply with the new accounting requirements, IA will be critical in conducting the initial risk assessment of these changes, monitoring of the process changeover, and conducting a post-implementation validation after conversion. Explore many specific areas that will be impacted, highlight those aspects likely to be under the IA magnifying glass, and find out how you can best prepare your IA teams to understand the changes and expedite the testing timeframes of their audits. By attending the session, you will be able to: • Understand general IA testing approach and framework. • Identify and address the key processes and procedures likely to be impacted by accounting change. • Build a communication plan that tailors the level of detail of documentation to the intended audience. (e.g., Leadership and BOD) • Document decisions made and implemented with IA in mind.

Description: In this article, a numerical comparison of two commonly used FIA valuation methodologies is conducted to help insurers decide on the best methodology to use under GAAP LDTI and VM-22. We compared two modeling approaches to project the future index credits with the annual point-to-point crediting formula: Tthe stochastic equity crediting model and the deterministic option budget crediting model. The analysis is then extended to different levels of option budgets and the monthly average crediting formula. The advantages and disadvantages of the two equity return projecting approaches are also highlighted and will be discussed later in the report.

Description: The time has arrived for ASU 2018-12, otherwise known as Long-Duration Targeted Improvements (LDTI). For health insurance products, the ASU will require considerable efforts to make the necessary changes to valuation systems, procedures, assumptions, and/or methodologies in order to be in compliance. This session is designed to cover LDTI implications specific to carriers of long-term care and supplemental health products, including changes to how attained age rated products will be approached, allocating and discounting the claim liability (IBNR), and how the treatment of Profits Followed by Losses (PFBL) will evolve under LDTI. By attending this session, you will be able to: • Understand LDTI’s key impacts on long-duration health insurance products. • Recognize the treatment of attained age rated products under LDTI. • Comprehend the requirements of allocating the claim liability to cohorts. • Grasp the requirements pertaining to the discounting of the claim liability. • Understand how PFBL will evolve under the new standard.

Description: An overview of how the VM-31 requirements for documenting PBR approaches and assumptions can/should reflect the Actuarial Standard of Practice on Modeling, ASOP No. 56