Description: This article looks at the purpose of the closed block, how it works, what some of the drawbacks are, the implementation of the concept and if there are any preferable alternatives to the closed block. From Society of Actuaries Financial Reporting Monograph, M-AS99-1.

Description: This article discusses the possible factors that could impact shareholders' reported equity upon transition from IFRS 4 to IFRS 17. It classifies these factors in two categories: 'Factors Related to Insurer's Business and Accounting Practices up to the Transition Date' and 'Factors Related to Implementation of IFRS 17'. It also briefly discusses improvements that are expected in the financial statements from adopting IFRS 17.

Description: This is the first in a series of articles about accounting for reinsurance under GAAP Targeted Improvements to the Accounting for Long-Duration Contracts (LDTI). It provides an introduction to the topic, giving an overview of what has and hasn't changed. Changes include a few that directly address reinsurance and others that indirectly result from changes to direct accounting and the existing ties between reinsurance and direct accounting.

Description: This article briefly summarizes the history of the Passive Foreign Investment Company (PFIC) tax regime. Then it provides a detailed description of the PFIC proposed regulations issued in July of 2019.

Description: In this article, we collected data from the companies’ roll-forward disclosures related to calendar years 2021 and 2022 on Market Risk Benefit and shared a high-level summary of the Market Risk Benefit volatility that a focus group of companies incurred and summarized the most common ways to mitigate volatility.

Description: The Inflation Reduction Act represents the most significant changes to the Part D program since its inception 20 years ago. The implications will not only alter the benefits offered by Medicare Advantage (MAPD) and Prescription Drug Plans (PDP) but will alter the Part D cash flows and the seasonality of such amounts for interim reporting periods. In this session, we will provide a brief overview of the IRA changes and dive into how the changes could impact the 2008 Medicare Part D Accounting Practice Note.

Description: Join us for this popular annual webcast covering the latest considerations for the year's U.S. statutory financial reporting work. Always informative and occasionally entertaining, this webcast offers a chance to hear from three expert speakers, who will discuss asset adequacy testing and this year's New York and California holiday letters, the impact of recent interest rate changes, potential changes to statutory financial reporting due to climate change, and recent proposal(s) impacting asset adequacy testing for reinsured business.

Description: As companies have reported their latest financials for 2023, LDTI is in its full swing for the public companies. Under US GAAP reinsurance accounting methods can be daunting. Add onto this legacy practices related to reinsurance reporting and this may lead to significant unwinding and implementation efforts. This session will discuss industry practices commonly applied to US GAAP reinsurance reported balances such that LDTI adopters can gather deeper insights into the LDTI impact. Specifically, the session will explain the two most popular methods to value reinsurance under LDTI, methods applying a direct measurement of the reinsurance net cost and a method that recognizes ceded asset balances and a cost of reinsurance (“CoRe”). The session will present simplified direct and ceded models to demonstrate how the actuarial balances under LDTI impact GAAP book profits for different underlying products and reinsurance types.

Description: An update on SOA research relevant to the Financial Reporting Section.

Description: Analyze the market volatility behavior in context with historical extreme events during this webcast. There will be a focus on understanding volatility clustering and relationships, both contemporary and temporal, in addition to key economic and capital market variables. You'll also learn from a comprehensive attribution analysis, which uses economic data, asset data, retail investor data and event data as explanatory variables. Dive into investment-related Reddit comments used to capture features of retail investors and tree-based models, including Random Forests and Gradient Boosting Machines to justify changes in volatility modeling. Expect this webcast to end with an example of liability-driven investment optimization that illustrates the potential impact of increased volatility assumption, how to adopt stochastic volatility models, how to reflect volatility clustering and return jumps.