Description: Leveraging the research papers "Emerging Technologies and their Impact on Actuarial Science and Top Actuarial Technologies," the presenters of this session will highlight current and emerging actuarial technology trends, discuss how these trends will impact the day-to-day work of actuaries, and explain what actuaries can do to adapt.

Description: At the end of December 2020, Congress enacted the Consolidated Appropriates Act, 2021, which included revisions to Section 7702. Effective for policies issued after December 31, 2020, the fixed 4% and 6% minimum annual effective rates under these tests were changed to refer to a market-based rate called the “insurance interest rate”. For contracts issued in 2021, the insurance rate was set to 2% - defined as the lower of the Section 7702 applicable federal interest rate based on the 60-month period ending December 2019 (2%) and the Section 7702 valuation interest rate in effect for 2020 (3.5%). This reduction in the rates used for compliance testing required significant product, operational, and technology changes for companies to reach product compliance. After 2021, the insurance interest rate is redetermined annually with a minimum change floor.

Description: For actuaries, finance and IT professionals, the long-duration targeted improvements (LDTI) implementation has been a career milestone. These projects were often the most significant undertaking of individuals’ careers, with respect to scale, complexity and duration. Join this session and participate in small groups, with consideration given to ensure each group has representation from both 2023 and 2025 filers., with moderators presenting questions to encourage small group discussion.

Description: How do you go about designing a new product? Behavioral Science is an often overlooked tool in enhancing product design and using a Discrete Choice Experiment (DCE) can give you insights to customer preferences and their willingness to pay for features. The result of this work is a product explicitly designed with your customers and market in mind.

Description: Actuaries too often get pulled into data management activities, taking them away from the analysis work they enjoy and were hired to do. Without a good relationship between actuaries and IT, this can persist even at companies that have been through finance transformations. Gain insight as we focus on the important relationship between actuaries and IT, and how they can work together on best practices for extracting, managing and using the policy data needed for actuarial models. Join our discussion on a variety of data governance and control practices used when extracting policy data from administration systems. Actuaries and IT must work together to create clear data dictionaries that fully document all steps taken as policy data runs through the exchange, transform and load (ETL) processes prior to being used in actuarial models.

Description: Decentralized finance, or DeFi, is an emerging financial system powered by blockchain technology. This research report aims to introduce actuaries to DeFi and help them develop a solid understanding of DeFi. It will begin with addressing “what is DeFi?” by providing an introduction on blockchains and DeFi. It will then discuss in further detail the key characteristics, applications, opportunities, and risks of DeFi. After providing the foundation, this report will discuss the potential adoption of DeFi and its interaction with the current financial system (sometime referred to as traditional finance for contrast with DeFi), and the implications for practicing and aspiring actuaries. In addition, a glossary of terms used in DeFi and a brief history of the development of DeFi have been included in the appendix.

Description: This collection presents three essays analyzing the multifaceted impacts of AI and LLMs on retirees and retirement professionals, blending quantitative, philosophical, and forward-looking perspectives.

Description: The global doubling of information content has been estimated to occur at a rate of every 12 hours, and conceivably faster. This ‘infowhelm’ is a double-edged sword for insurers. While maximization of the global knowledge base can fuel innovation, it can occur only in the context of reasonable cost for a higher benefit. The insurance industry – underwriters and actuaries in particular – are challenged to constantly examine new innovations that promise to raise confidence and protective value for insurability, within legal limits. This report aims to be the first of several to alert the SOA of promising innovations for the profession.

Description: Hop into a panel discussion between InsurTech Advisory Council and a startup, followed by a demo of life event prediction and analyses with multiple applications across financial services. You will also learn about: the SOA office hours program and member participation, the startup ecosystem filled with incubators, company contests, opportunities and outcomes, how to build a data set providing additional insights for customization and enhanced user experience, and - actuaries' engagement with startup strategic advisory boards.

Description: Session 5A: Creating Continuity in Behavioral Health for Medicaid & ACA Beneficiaries