Description: A presentation that summarizes and analyzes the risks catastrophe bond investors are exposed to and have to be aware of.

Description: This session will discuss health regulatory updates including a summary of all non-health benefit plans, such as LTC, cancer, hospital/limited benefit plans, and stop loss. This would include views from regulators and companies.

Description: Ronald Fawthrop and Brian Holland of the SOA’s Individual Life Experience Committee provided a preview of an upcoming individual life mortality study at the SOA’s Life and Annuity Symposium on May 9, 2017. Their presentations are available here.

Description: Reserving and ratemaking calculations are vital to how insurance companies perform financially. Current-day practices for predicting future loss ratio or pure premiums for reserving and ratemaking rates are not based on low prediction errors—mean squared error (MSE) criterion. This report provides mathematically optimal weights that lead to minimum MSE prediction errors, and the formulas are validated using retro-testing with real-world datasets. In this report, two main theorems are discussed, each addressing prediction of future loss ratio or pure premium and improving upon current practices for how rates and reserves are calculated.

Description: This article addresses the difficulties of risk modeling in a poor economic environment. The problems include imperfect vendors of data, facing events that have never occurred before, unpredictable consumer behavior, conflicting data sources, and AAA credit doesn't always mean AAA.

Description: Starting with a review of recent VA and FIA industry policyholder behavior experience, this session will explore several critical elements in developing a sustainable and coherent framework to translate this complex experience data to assumption models, particularly for guarantee features such as GLWBs. The discussion will include the use of industry- and company-level data in building customized predictive models, and integrating models across behaviors such as income utilization and surrenders.

Description: Reinsurance has been available for VA Guarantees for over 20 years. During that time, the reinsurance market for VA Guarantees has undergone frequent and sometimes violent transformations. Where does the market stand today? What forms and structures of reinsurance are available? Which VA Guarantee designs and features are easier to reinsure? Is reinsurance offered on both newly issued policies as well as in force/legacy books, and which vintages are difficult to reinsure? In an age of sophisticated hedging programs, what role does a reinsurer play in helping a VA writer manage this highly volatile risk? In this session, we will hear from a reinsurer that is actively writing new VA Guarantee reinsurance treaties in the U.S. and around the world, and from a VA writer that has successfully partnered with a reinsurer to enhance its VA product offering.

Description: The Society of Actuaries are once again offering a seminar that investigates all aspects of life insurance, annuity and long term care product tax compliance. Developed by the Taxation Section, participants will be brought up-to-date on recent Internal Revenue Service (IRS) guidance and learn about the newest tax issues related to product design and administration. Legal, IRS and product development experts will provide vital insights into the challenges of developing and administering products within the requirements of the Internal Revenue Code (IRC), and allow ample opportunities for networking, questions and information exchange.September 12The optional “boot camp” will provide an intense introduction to the basics of product taxation. The boot camp will include sessions focused on life insurance, annuities, and long-term care combination products. The basis of the boot camp will be the authoritative textbooks, “Life Insurance and Modified Endowments Under IRC Sections 7702 and 7702A” and the “Annuities Answer Book.” Book authors will conduct these optional programs. September 13–14The general sessions will feature product, tax, legal and compliance experts as well as Internal Revenue Service (IRS) representatives. Recent changes in the qualification requirements of insurance products and a host of product tax issues beyond Internal Revenue Code (IRC) section 7702 and 7702A will be emphasized.

Description: The objective of this report is to provide benchmarking information that will help companies address the needs of internal stakeholders in cost-effectively conducting and implementing an ORSA process. In order to obtain this benchmarking information, a cross-disciplinary survey was conducted to find out what insurance companies understand and expect from an ORSA, the effort required to complete an ORSA, and the benefits from doing so. This survey was undertaken on a global basis, with participants that included life, property and casualty (P&C), often referred to as "non-life" or "general" insurers in territories such as Europe, and health insurance companies in North America (the United States and Canada), Europe, and Asia.

Description: The presenters will dig into the little rider that most actuaries don't spend much time thinking about. A regulator, a direct writer and a consultant will discuss their thoughts on this rider and point out areas where actuaries should focus before deeming it insignificant. Topics will include the current study underway to update the industry experience study (most recently done in 1952), underwriting considerations, interactions with other riders, benefit designs, unique issues on UL policies, tax implications and reserving considerations