Description: Report on results of survey designed to get feedback on some hot topics in industry - namely predictive analytics and accelerated & enhanced underwriting.

Description: Results of survey conducted in July 2006 about the methods used by insurers to develop their pricing mortality assumptions for fully underwritten life insurance in the U.S. The objective was to understand how companies adjust base mortality tables and whether mortality improvement was assumed.

Description: This study was sponsored by the Society of Actuaries Health Section. This paper explores the relative significance of aging as a determinant of financial cost of health care beyond age 50, with particular attention to the effect for ages 65 and older. The paper presents concepts of aging factors and aging curves, which define relative values between ages for utilization or cost of health care services. General conclusions are drawn from Medicare data that utilization and cost differ by age, but that aging factors vary across services and may be less significant at very old ages. The author then turns to the question of measuring the significance of an aging curve assumption and what accuracy is lost in the simpler alternative of a single value across an age range.

Description: This paper describes seven methods used in care management in the order of their historical development: 1. Pre-Authorization 2. Concurrent Review 3. Case Management 4. Demand Management 5. Disease Management 6. Specialty Case Management 7. Population Health Management Paper 1 of a 8 paper series

Description: This paper develops an option pricing model that takes cost of capital concepts as its foundation rather than dynamic replication. The resulting model, called the 'C' measure in this paper, is related to the family of Affine Jump Diffusion models that are well known in the finance literature, so it is fairly easy to understand and implement. We argue that this is a reasonable model to use for estimating equity implied volatilities that are beyond the five- to 10-year horizon that can typically be observed in today‘s capital markets. The paper concludes with a short discussion of how to grade from observable market data to the 'C' measure.

Description: The abstract for the paper Dr. Phil's Guide to Pension Funding Reform.

Description: Investment Fallacies: The "Dollar Bill" Fallacy

Description: Statistics about funded status for musicians' multiemployer pension plan

Description: Statistics about funded status of multiemployer pension plan.

Description: This article discusses Internal Revue Code, ‘IRC,’ Sections 7702 and 7702A with respect to the implementation of the 2001 CSO Mortality Table, which must be used in the calculations for policies issued on or after January 1, 2006. “The insurance industry has requested guidance from the Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service on the proper application of the current computational rules to the 2001 CSO Mortality Table but, to date, such guidance has not been provided. Therefore, the Taxation Section established the 2001 CSO Maturity Age Task Force, the members of which authored this article, to propose methodologies that would be actuarially acceptable under Sections 7702 and 7702A of the Code for calculations under contracts that do not provide for actual maturity before age 100.” This article summarizes the task force recommendations.