Description: Other articles that will be of interest to readers.

Description: Read the August 2016 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: This article offers a possible resolution to certain circularity issues that may arise while implementing the SOP.

Description: A discussion of the limitations of the use of spreadsheets versus formal programs in actuarial processes. including limited documentation, inability to incorporate new features without significant coding and subtle bugs that may appear.

Description: The next evolution of actuarial systems in the U.S. will likely be a move toward a single system solution. This article defines a single system solution and illustrates how models can be shared across actuarial functions, the potential benefits of a single system solution, and describes potential mitigation strategies to address typical actuarial concerns.

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: The Behavioral Finance subgroup of the Health Section will be publishing a series of literature reviews in Health Watch. This is the first review of three in the series. The reviewed article describes an attempt to place an econometric value on consumers’ preferences between broad and narrow networks.

Description: Discussion of the importance of trust law in North American qualified retirement plans.

Description: This article compares three potential approaches to determining new coefficients for health-based risk scoring models: full recalibration, p-value credibility weighting, and penalized ridge regression.

Description: Defines Accelerated Underwriting programs as a transformational trend, and outlines a process for evaluating mortality implications of such programs.