Description: Demographic challenges due to longevity increases and low fertility rates will lower economic growth as measured by GDP. By deconstructing GDP growth between population and productivity growth the article describes the problem and presents potential solutions. The article builds off an SOA research paper published in November 2023, Demographics and Productivity: Drivers of Economic Growth.

Description: On September 14, 2022, The Wall Street Journal hosted its ‘Future of Health’ event, which was a virtual event featuring three sessions on some emerging cutting-edge topics that could impact the future healthcare environment as well as health care actuaries. This report summarizes the event.

Description: Gather with members and non-members in the China actuarial community to discuss recent topics and related issues in areas such as macroeconomic sharing, pension, investment, product strategy, and more.

Description: ReFocus is an annual global conference for senior-level life insurance and reinsurance executives hosted jointly by ACLI and the Society of Actuaries (SOA). This event features top-notch speakers, thought-provoking sessions, and superior networking opportunities.

Description: The SOA Research Institute tasked the Workforce Science Institute to investigate how retirement benefit plans can affect a plan sponsor’s workforce and business results. The following is an interview with Rick Guzzo and Haig Nalbantian co-founders of the Workforce Science Institute who are the researchers on this project. The interview gives a helicopter view of the project as well as provides some “food for thought” on how retirement plans can be designed to produce an effective workforce.

Description: Come discuss how reinsurers can work side by side with insurer to better develop products, and lift in the areas that reinsurers have more experience, help matching products with distributions (or vice versa) and provide advanced technologies associated with tools and software. The speakers will also present Direct to Consumer plan from various points of view, i.e., distributors, carriers, and reinsurers. Some case studies will also be presented where traditional reinsurers and asset-intensive reinsurers helped insurers bring products to life.

Description: There is increasing industry interest in applying behavioral science to optimize product design decisions and improve outcomes for both insurers and their customers. With a growing set of options within product designs, predicting consumer behavior continues to get increasingly complex. Join this webcast for an overview of key behavioral economic concepts. Key insights will be shared from two SOA projects that explore how behavioral economic techniques can be used in various parts of the life insurance new business process and enforce management.

Description: Chapter 4 of the Price, Waterhouse study presents and extensive collection of numerical tables. From Study of Public Financial Guarantee Programs, M-FI96-2.

Description: A description about current efforts of several Central and Southern Europen countries to improve penetration and density of insurance coverage, in the personal view of Renata De Leers. De Leers has spent many years consulting with regulators and industry leaders, and is an advocate of inclusive insurance solutions, as a way to foster economic development.

Description: The crisis has spread due to a systematic failure of the regulatory system. Over the last 20 years, regulations that fostered market stability were eliminated and new financial instruments were allowed to propagate without any real oversight. Instead of bailing out weak financial firms, we should be liquidating them. All doubtful assets need to be written-downs. We need accurate and transparent accounting. Government can help in this effort by cleaning up our accounting system. But it needs to stop being an investor propping up those that should be in the morgue. It needs to conservatively regulate all financial instruments. It should foster liquidity and stoke demand.