Description: This SOA research report produced by Kamakura Corporation helps illuminate credit risk modeling techniques within the life insurance industry. It includes a review of available research on the subject from academic and industry sources, the development and distribution of a survey on actual techniques used within the industry, and all associated analysis. The finance and economics literature review provides a historical review of academic research on credit modeling with Altman Z-scores, Merton’s structural model and more recent “reduced form models” The industry literature includes discussions of the various credit modeling techniques, factor-based approaches, credit migration models, structural models, reduced form models, hybrid models, actuarial models and credit scoring models. As credit risk modeling is an extremely broad topic, the scope of the survey is narrowed to particular asset classes and functions. There were 22 responses in total to the survey from locations in Canada, Europe and the United states.

Description: Recommendation for a set of improvement factors to be used in conjunction with the 2008 Valuation Basic table or the 2015 Valuation Basic table

Description: The SOA has collaborated with LIMRA, Reinsurance Group of America (RGA), and TAI on an ongoing effort to analyze the impact of COVID-19 on the individual life insurance industry’s mortality experience. The data collected for this study included 2.8 million deaths from life insurance policies covering the period January 1, 2015 to September 30, 2020.

Description: Underwriting has continually evolved throughout the history of insurance. Technology advancements over time have opened, and will continue to open, new underwriting possibilities from both process automation and content standpoints.

Description: The Committee on Life Insurance Mortality and Underwriting Surveys of the Society of Actuaries Research Institute sent companies a survey in May of 2019 on mortality improvement practices. Note this survey was completed prior to the onset of COVID-19, so that issue was not addressed in this survey. The purpose of the Survey was to examine mortality improvement practices with respect to life insurance and annuity pricing and financial projections in both the U.S. and Canada.

Description: In the second quarter of 2022, publicly traded life insurers reported some of their best financial results since the pandemic began. COVID-19-related claims fell sharply in many product categories. Sales, which had taken a big hit, showed significant improvement as well, though not always to pre-pandemic levels. Sales activity was enough, however, for industry executives to report confidently in their quarterly conference calls that in this regard the worst consequences of the pandemic are over.

Description: This report contains a set of of unloaded and loaded mortality tables for guaranteed issue business.

Description: A report to explain the new Valuation Basic Tables (VBT), Relative Risk tables (RR), and Commissioners Standard Ordinary Mortality Tables (CSO)

Description: The purpose of this research project was to survey professionals in the viatical and life settlement a.k.a. secondary insurance industry to discover how actuaries could best serve this particular business.

Description: This is a research report that highlights the characteristics of combination plans that serve to reduce the risks to insurers issuing life or annuity products linked to long-term care insurance. Observations are provided to assist in the understanding of the factors that explain the profit change sensitivity results and the natural hedging against major risks that inherently is present within the linked products.