Description: Read the February 2020 issue of Risk Management, published by the Joint Risk Management Section. Newsletters provide practical information for the working actuary, articles on trends that impact sections and news about section activities.

Description: A new project combining survey data from people across the country with data from John's Hopkins and the CDC on COVID cases and deaths. This project provides weekly data for individuals, businesses, and policy makers to understand which COVID mitigation efforts are in place in their area, how they are working, and how different COVID mitigation methods have been working in different parts of the country.

Description: MACRA not only impact providers, it will impact the entire healthcare market. MACRA published studies and commentary to date have primarily focused on providers, with the majority of the information addressing the impacts to clinicians. However, our investigation indicates MACRA has far reaching impacts to payers as well as providers. MACRA is impacting each geographic market and line of business in a unique way, and health payers will have multiple strategic decisions to consider given the changing market dynamics.

Description: Read the November 14 2019 issue of Health Watch, published by the Health Section. Practical information for actuaries, articles impact sections, section activities.

Description: Read the October 2019 issues of Health Watch, published by the Health Section. Practical information for actuaries, articles impact sections, section activities. This is the second digital-only issue of the newsletter.

Description: India is in the process of updating to a more risk-based capital framework. The article provides a high level introduction of the development and discusses some of the key design and implementation considerations.

Description: Read the January 2020 issue of International News published by the International Section. Newsletters provide practical information for the working actuary, articles on trends that impact sections and news about section activities.

Description: Align carrier, agent, and consumer definition(s) of DTC to establish a collective understanding for the affected parties. Understand why a direct-to-consumer approach may be important for carriers’ and distributors’ growth and development goals, tactics and strategies. Use the agreed-upon baseline and understanding of DTC’s importance to establish and agree upon reasonable expectations for its role in marketing, distribution, and product development and performance. Position carriers and distributors together to align sales, marketing and performance expectations and incentives for all parties to increase the possibility of outperforming in (and outside of) the DTC space; design sales, marketing and distribution systems and approaches to meet consumers where they are at; and expand current sales and cultivate new markets to remain relevant and magnify profiles in an ever-changing industry.

Description: This article, Spreadsheet Controls Add Risk Resilience, spotlights why spreadsheets have stood the test of time and how they help contribute to an actuary’s success. It also discusses common causes of data integrity issues relative to spreadsheets. And, offers insight into controls that can be utilized to helps actuaries solve these issues and ensure the accuracy and consistency of the data on which they base their analysis.

Description: This article summarizes five key lessons we have learned in implementing LDTI and shares our insights on practical ways to address them. This is not an exhaustive list of implementation challenges, but companies that can successfully tackle the issues we describe should have a smoother data and systems implementation transition.