Description: This article is intended to inform readers about the current state of mental health and health care in the US, as were it's heading moving forward.

Description: A look at current AI usage and future use cases.

Description: This article outlines industry practice and consideration for pricing acceleration-only riders to life insurance policies.

Description: Read this Chairperson's Corner for the March 2024 issue of International News to learn more about planned meetings and upcoming events.

Description: Briefly reviews the history of Information Technology, IT, in the life insurance business. It then talks about the emerging trends in IT management and the impact they likely will have on the work of the life insurance actuary.

Description: S&P reissued a second Request for Comment (RFC) in May 2023 that proposed changes to their insurer capital adequacy methodology and assumptions, and suggested these proposed changes may become effective at the end of 2023. This paper is to highlight the notable changes between the current capital model criteria and the proposed model. We also discuss major changes from the first RFC and the second RFC, as well as several key items that still require enhanced guidance and clarification. Our analysis is based on information gathered from S&P's public comments, conversations with industry participants, and publications released by S&P Global as of July 2023 when this paper was written. Most U.S. life insurers are rated by S&P using their U.S. Life Statutory Capital model, while other insurers use the GAAP/IFRS Capital Model. Statutory financials will remain the starting point for U.S. life insurers under the proposed model, however there will be additional adjustments made to these numbers in an effort to create consistency and comparability with other accounting and solvency regimes.

Description: The SOA Research Institute has executed research for over twenty years on some repeating themes and topics. The reports build on each other and add content. This article summarizes and discusses a summary report on long-term care, caregiving and housing linked to long-term care and caregiving.

Description: Discussion on modeling Medicare Supplement insurance and the considerations when choosing an Actuarial Modeling Software (AMS). Focuses on model risk management, key modeling assumptions and inputs, and the complex interactions between modeling assumptions and why its critical to have a model that can handle that complexity. This article also touches on the incorporation the of accounting and regulatory regimes into the model, including Statutory, GAAP (Legacy and LDTI), and Tax regimes, and the modeling considerations for sensitivity testing and capital planning. Lastly, the article highlights the capabilities to look for when choosing an AMS for Medicare Supplement

Description: Our previous article, “Introduction of Cashflow Matching Strategic Asset Allocation (SAA) Framework,” introduced the concept and included a real-world case study that developed a liability-driven investment strategy for a single line of business (LOB) for a life insurer. This article expands the framework and the case study from a single LOB to simultaneously optimize asset allocation across multiple LOBs. It discusses how this multi-line SAA framework can enable an insurance company to efficiently tag its asset holdings to each LOB, identify opportunities in the public and private asset markets to enhance risk-adjusted returns, and develop a deeper understanding of the trade-off between the degree of cashflow matching and risk-adjusted returns across LOBs.

Description: Understanding the volatility associated with audit samples, as well as breaking out the different contributors to estimated mortality impact are vital tools in helping actuaries and underwriters make informed decisions about less invasive underwriting programs. This article walks through a sample example demonstrating how to calculate these metrics.