Description: The mismatch between how interest rate impacts the value of assets and liabilities could have material negative impact to companies’ earnings and surplus. To quantify and mitigate the impact of such mismatches, companies have used matching a combination of duration and convexity. I will review these measurement techniques and their limitations.

Description: A recap of the SOA Research Institute's participation in the Spring 2024 NAIC National Meeting.

Description: To inform and educate stakeholders for health plans and insurers on novel ways to optimize reinsurance structures to meet capital related goals and boost RBC and liquidity ratios. In lieu of traditional market-based financial instruments involving equity and/or debt, a quota share transaction can be used with potentially far more attractive terms and achieving essentially the same result.

Description: The article provides an overview of the federal tax treatment of long-term care insurance contracts, including a brief history of the tax treatment of long-term care insurance, the requirements that must be satisfied in order to be treated as qualified long-term care insurance under the Internal Revenue Code, and a brief discussion of qualified long-term care combination products and chronic and terminal illness accelerated death benefits offered under life insurance contracts.

Description: This article provides an update, as of October 2023, on Financial Reporting Section research projects in process and those recently completed.

Description: The article discusses the continued popularity of indexed UL insurance and possible reasons why a company's actual indexed UL earnings may be below their original pricing expectations for the product. The article discusses several key items that may be the source of that underperformance (e.g., hedge ineffectiveness, policyholder behavior) and the need to monitor earnings and perform analyses to better understand those potential sources.

Description: Valerie Tsang and Jessica Kirkwood are both senior consultants with Ernst & Young LLP (EY UK) and Ernst & Young LLP (EY US) respectively, who also have something else in common—they both have recently moved to a new country and are now immersed in a different market. Here, they discuss the quick-changing landscape of actuarial work and regulations and the importance of being aware of the key issues both in the countries they work in and globally, as well as some of the differences they have seen between the UK and US markets.

Description: The chairperson for the marketing and distribution section discusses the section welcome call and outline future topics and themes for the year head.

Description: Looking to the upcoming 2024 year and looking back at the 2023 year in the International Section.

Description: An overview of John Robinson's experience at the recently concluded annual meeting of the Caribbean Actuarial Association in Trinidad.