Description: Read the June 2017 issue of The Financial Reporter published by the Financial Reporting Section.

Description: Abstract: The U.K. Pension Protection Fund (PPF) was established in April 2005 to protect the pensions of members of U.K. private sector defined benefit pension schemes that have insufficient assets and whose corporate sponsor fails. The Fund takes over the pension scheme assets and assumes responsibility for the payment of compensation to the former members of the scheme. The PPF is funded by a levy on the population of eligible schemes. To improve its ERM framework, the PPF has undertaken a reverse stress testing exercise. This analysis provided the organization with new insights into its risk profile, the scenarios leading to the PPF’s potential “failure,” and interactions between these scenarios. This paper discusses the principles and objectives of reverse stress testing in the special case of the PPF and then illustrates the application of complex system science techniques for the purpose of reverse stress testing.

Description: Mergers and Acquisitions: Appraising a block of Long Term Care business. From Long-Term Care Newsletter, August 2001, Issue No. 5.

Description: Medicaid and the ACA

Description: In order to better develop skill in predictive analytics, the author suggests looking to professionals who design innovative predictive models and, more importantly, find effective ways to communicate their findings to a large audience.

Description: In this paper, we illustrate how to value American-style options using the Least-Squares Monte Carlo LSM approach proposed by Longstaff and Schwartz 2001 and investigate whether there exists an optimal regression complexity in the LSM framework for options pricing. In particular, we use the smoothing spline in the regression step, which allows us to control the regression complexity on a continuous scale with just one tuning parameter. Numerical results on American put options indicate that we need to use more than a linear regression, but as the regression becomes more complex, the accuracy of the LSM method quickly deteriorates. From 39th Actuarial Research Conference.

Description: This is a presentation from the Actuarial Research Conference in August 2006 in Montreal. It is on Bayesian Inference Resistant to Outliers. Presented by Alain Desgagne.

Description: This paper investigates the optimal multi-period proportional reinsurance strategy that minimizes the ruin probability of an insurer. Some conditions under which it is optimal to have no reinsurance are derived. Based on these results, a new concept, capital threshold of proportional reinsurance, is introduced. In the case of two periods, a lower bound of the capital threshold of proportional reinsurance is provided. Some economic implications and properties of this new concept are also discussed.

Description: The Early Duration Claims Survey Subcommittee of the Society's Committee on Life Insurance Mortality & Underwriting Surveys has completed their report on the results of a survey on life insurance claims in early policy durations.