Description: The different broad purposes served by the material change concept under federal tax law are outlined. More specific material change and similar issues that are pertinent to particular Code provisions and guidance from the IRS that has addressed those issues are also addressed. In the final part of this article, authors comment on whether any overarching principles can be gleaned that can assist insurers and policy owners in making decisions about whether particular changes can safely be made, and thoughts are offered with respect to future potential IRS guidance that would be helpful as taxpayers navigate these often uncertain waters.

Description: The author discusses how sustainable enterprise risk management (SERM) is valuable for insurance companies and how actuaries can contribute to its development.

Description: Three papers use sophisticated actuarial methods to develop a straightforward retirement income strategy that can be implemented in virtually any IRA or 401(k).

Description: We highlight a new approach leveraging predictive analytics to identify high risk and rising risk opioid users for more effective screening and follow-up care.

Description: This article discusses key considerations to build an incentive compensation program.

Description: "Management must manage. An incentive compensation formula will not be sufficient."

Description: A collection of essays that discuss the principles and ideas underpinning the ORSA initiative and the risk metrics used for decision making.

Description: Many top-performing businesses aren’t just risk aware, but rather risk intelligent. Such a posture helps prepare companies for a major event and can demonstrate to a regulator or auditor that an appropriately strong control framework is in place. Better still, companies gain real strategic value from a “risk adjusted” understanding not only of their threats and vulnerabilities, but also the upside opportunities associated with various risks. It starts with having both qualitative and quantitative information to identify, assess and manage risks. Strategic risk management, at its core, is about creating value by increasing transparency and accountability, and quality of information. More than a mere compliance exercise, effective risk management enables more informed strategic decision making, increased accountability and transparency, a greater likelihood of organizational success, and – ultimately – competitive advantage, as borne out by many studies that correlate risk management and financial results.

Description: We describe our process of hand-curation of centenarian pedigrees and software that we developed for the automated construction of pedigrees.