Description: This research report discusses simplified issue underwriting in life insurance. It examines recent developments, characteristics, challenges, current practices, assumptions and data elements.

Description: The objective of this paper is to discuss the factors that affect and should be considered in the development of social discount rates, with a primary focus on social cost-benefit analyses of climate change-related strategies, programs, and investments involving mitigation and ex-ante adaption efforts.

Description: Retirement market study of Argentina.

Description: Retirement market study of Colombia in Spanish.

Description: Subsequent to the publication of the original report, a smaller panel met to discuss the implications that COVID-19 has had on algorithmic underwriting.

Description: This report highlights major weather stories that unfolded across the month of July 2020.

Description: This report highlights major weather stories that unfolded across the month of June 2020.

Description: Prior work indicates that a regime-switching stochastic model with randomized regime parameters creates a more plausible set of extreme paths than do the usual stochastic interest rate models. Generalizing the Black-Karasinski model by randomizing the mean reversion target provides an example. Better to understand such models, as well as to calibrate their parameters without trial and error runs of a stochastic model, this paper uses an asymptotic expansion to estimate the moments of the integrated stochastic process over time. Mention is made of a family of related asymptotic expansions that could be of wider interest.

Description: This paper incorporates a jump-diffusion process into the original Lee-Carter model, and uses it to forecast mortality rates and analyze mortality securitization.

Description: In Canada, there are three main sources of government-provided retirement income: 1. The Canada/Quebec Pension Plan [C/QPP], which have benefits and contributions based on earnings up to the Yearly Maximum Pensionable Earnings, 2. Old Age Security [OAS], which is a fixed amount for most but does include a 'clawback' of benefits for high-income individuals, and 3. The Guaranteed Income Supplement [GIS], which is designed to supplement those with extremely low income. The annual GIS benefit is reduced, or clawed back, by 50 cents for every dollar of annual income the person has in retirement, including C/QPP and income from Registered Retirement Savings Plans [RRSP] and other savings. OAS benefits are not included in determining the GIS clawback. The result of this is that low-income individuals who attempt to enhance their retirement replacement ratio actually see a decrease in government-provided support the more they save for retirement. In fact, savings in an RRSP can effectively be taxed at more than 100% through corresponding reductions in the GIS, social housing, home care, GAINS [Ontario's Guaranteed Annual Income Supplement], and other benefits which are based on one's personal retirement income. This paper explores a basic GIS exemption, a GIS clawback rate of lower than 50%, and various combinations of the two as alternative policies for the GIS. The goal is to improve the fairness of the GIS and reduce the disincentive to save for retirement, without increasing the overall cost of the program significantly.