Description: Humor in the workplace can improve productivity. This article describes a typical office relationship problem and how humor helped disparate teams work together.

Description: E-courses available from the Society of Actuaries.

Description: Mortality in the U.S. states at ages 80 and older and over years 1959–2011 analyzed and compared with mortality levels in 13 high-longevity countries.

Description: The National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) is moving forward to implement a new regulatory requirement that requires U.S. insurers to perform an Own Risk and Solvency Assessment (ORSA). Before developing a response to the ORSA requirement, insurers will want to understand its genesis and the underlying rationale for it, as well as its implications. This essay provides an overview of the evolution and rationale for ORSA, as well as practical implications for insurers as they begin to design an ORSA process. Part of the essay collection "Risk Metrics for Decision Making and ORSA"

Description: A discussion of Universal Life products with shadow accounts including a summary of some of the key communications and administration issues

Description: A preview of the contents of the latest issue, including essays & interviews related to health care reform, provider reimbursements, rate filing review, and medical errors.

Description: The article summarizes three papers presented at the 2014 Living to 100 Symposium V, which was hosted by the SOA in Orlando in January 2014. The papers take three different views of retirement saving: the individual's, the insurance provider's and a wholesale risk management view. David Blanchett of Morningstar proposes a new model to assess the true cost of retirement, Moshe Milevsky proposes a new product concept based on the nearly forgotten tontine and Johnny Li proposes a new set of mortality indices based on the Cairns-Blake-Dowd projection model for the purpose of actively managing mortality and longevity risk.

Description: The editors provide highlights of the articles included in the August 2015 issue of Risk Management.

Description: A preview of the latest issue, with articles covering reverse mortgages, the challenges of long-term care policy in France, and the impact of obesity and diabetes on LTC disability and mortality.

Description: On October 30, 2015, the SOA Assumption Development and Governance Group, an informal discussion group consisting of nearly 200 interested actuaries with topics pertaining to actuarial assumption development and governance, organized an industry discussion call on end-to-end assumption documentation practices. The purpose of this call was to generate a large list of ideas for best-practice assumption documentation. More than thirty companies were represented in the call, including direct insurers, reinsurers and consulting firms. This article is the work product of the discussion written by Laurie Li and Alex Zaidlin.