Description: 2022 Welcome and Strategic Themes for the Marketing and Distribution Section Council.

Description: On August 29, 2022, the SOA Research Institute assembled an industry expert panel to discuss current issues in actuarial technology. This was the third time such a panel was assembled, and most panelists had participated in the previous discussions. Each participant volunteering for being part of the discussion was selected because of their management-level responsibilities for the application of technology in an actuarial context. The group was diverse in terms of employment, including company actuaries from life, health, and property/casualty backgrounds, as well as consultants from various kinds of firms. This panel included participants from outside the U.S. as well.

Description: In this article, Aneesha Deshpande examines how Hagerty's complementary business models- specialty insurance and automotive lifestyle and membership services- are a result of a deep understanding of customer needs.

Description: Learn more about the predictive modeling that was applied to industry data for the lapse and mortality experience in the post-level term period. Novel approaches were taken to model the shock lapse, subsequent lapse, and mortality experience. Observe a demonstration of the Tableau tool, which was built to allow users to analyze data on their own.

Description: Decentralized insurance alternatives is a rapidly expanding sector of Decentralized Finance (DeFi), an emerging and growing financial ecosystem powered by blockchain technologies. The purpose of this report is to review and discuss the business models and operating designs of decentralized insurance alternatives, which may have significant implications for traditional insurance businesses, as well as the actuarial profession.

Description: Decentralized insurance alternatives is a rapidly expanding sector of Decentralized Finance (DeFi), an emerging and growing financial ecosystem powered by blockchain technologies. The purpose of this report is to review and discuss the business models and operating designs of decentralized insurance alternatives, which may have significant implications for traditional insurance businesses, as well as the actuarial profession.

Description: View the Avoiding Unfair Bias in Insurance Applications of AI Models

Description: Decentralized finance, or DeFi, is an emerging financial system powered by blockchain technology. This research report aims to introduce actuaries to DeFi and help them develop a solid understanding of DeFi. It will begin with addressing “what is DeFi?” by providing an introduction on blockchains and DeFi. It will then discuss in further detail the key characteristics, applications, opportunities, and risks of DeFi. After providing the foundation, this report will discuss the potential adoption of DeFi and its interaction with the current financial system (sometime referred to as traditional finance for contrast with DeFi), and the implications for practicing and aspiring actuaries. In addition, a glossary of terms used in DeFi and a brief history of the development of DeFi have been included in the appendix.

Description: Last year, the COVID pandemic significantly increased the pace of change in the life insurance industry, particularly in Accelerated Underwriting (AU). In the past, underwriting process changes occurred relatively infrequently and over a matter of years. Now, with new data sources and predictive models constantly evolving, the frequency of underwriting enhancements and decisioning changes, particularly in AU programs, is occurring every few months. With so much change occurring quickly, how can a company effectively monitor and understand the effects of these changes to make continuous adjustments with confidence and agility? Well-designed data visualizations allow a reviewer to navigate and comprehend detailed results quickly because our brains can process data in a picture format more than 15 times faster than text. Today’s advanced BI tools can make AU program monitoring more efficient and help companies adjust quickly to the results from program changes.

Description: This session series is sponsored by Zelis Shifting utilization of health services to efficient and high-value providers presents an opportunity to reduce harmful cascades of wasteful spending, ultimately freeing up funds for additional high-value services that will improve quality and member satisfaction. Identifying the right providers to put at the center of networks is challenging for any health care organization. How can you objectively determine which providers are delivering the greatest value when compared to their peers? And once those providers are identified, what’s next? Join Zelis and their partner HealthCorum to review a case study on a shared services organization where they leveraged statewide multi-payer claims data to produce provider level analytics, allowing for transparency into provider practice patterns at a granular level. By attending this session, you will be able to: - Create a fair methodology to benchmark providers. - Develop metrics and scores to identify high-value providers. - Produce actionable data to be used for network optimization strategies.