Description: A call for proposals for research projects exploring recent insurance product innovations and their impacts on the industry. It outlines the background, purpose, objectives, proposal requirements, selection process, submission details, conditions, and conflict of interest disclosures.

Description: Over the past month, the evolution of the COVID-19 pandemic has raised questions on how this outbreak will impact life insurance industry claims. This report pulls emerging U.S. COVID-19 hospitalization data and deaths obtained from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) COVIDView, a Weekly Surveillance Summary of U.S. COVID-19 activity, and compares it to data from past U.S. influenza seasons obtained from the CDC’s Flu Activity and Surveillance webpage.

Description: The purpose of this document is to inform the user of the 2022 Health Care Cost Model about the sources of data, other reports, and assumptions which were used to populate this report and drive some of the key considerations.

Description: To broaden knowledge in emerging issues and topics, the REC is seeking researchers to submit one or more proposals. Sample topics below have been identified as focus areas by the REC. The description of each of the topics has deliberately been written to be brief and open-ended to give researchers sufficient latitude in the development of their proposals. Researchers should not feel constrained by these topics, as many other relevant topics continuously emerge.

Description: The SOA Research Institute has been publishing its annual Getzen Model of Long-Run Medical Cost Trends for the past decade. The Health Care Cost Trends Strategic Research Committee is looking for a researcher to build on the legacy of the Getzen model and provide annual updates to the SOA’s long-term health care trend projections.

Description: The Retirement Plans Experience Committee of the Society of Actuaries (RPEC) is pleased to present this annual update to the RPEC_2014 model and its corresponding mortality improvement scales. This new version of the model reflects historical U.S. population mortality experience through 2018. For clarity, the updated mortality improvement scale based on this 2020 version of the model is called Scale MP-2020.

Description: The Society of Actuaries (SOA) published its first COVID-19 research brief on March 10, 2020, followed by regular updates and expansions through June 12, 2020. The comprehensive report included a section of Key Statistics. This report provides updates to some of the data from the Key Statistics section of the brief and additional related data, organized by geography.

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: This research report discusses simplified issue underwriting in life insurance. It examines recent developments, characteristics, challenges, current practices, assumptions and data elements.

Description: This report provides various summaries of the above listed data and provides observations from these summaries, with a goal to help actuaries understand the emerging trends in mortality due to COVID-19.