Description: The Society of Actuaries Research Institute, in collaboration with Reinsurance Group of America, Incorporated, a leading global life and health reinsurer, announced findings from new research on behavioral science for the life insurance sector. This research simulated online term life insurance purchasing to test behavioral science techniques.

Description: "Population Aging, Global Climate Change and Social Security – Sally Shen, Research Associate, Global Risk Institute, John A. Turner, Ph.D., Director, Pension PolicyClimate Change and Mortality Time for Actuaries to Pay Attention – Sam Gutterman. FSA, CERA, FCAS, FCA, HONFIA, MAAA"

Description: Discover an introduction to decomposing differences in life expectancy by age and cause of death. Take a look into demographic techniques that decompose life expectancies at birth and older ages into the portions contributed by later age groups and causes of death-. These have been in existence for some time and provide a convenient device for analyzing mortality change over time as well as differences between sexes, countries, and ethnic groups. The methods will be described and illustrated by spreadsheet examples.

Description: In this talk, we look at two behavioral aspects: from end customers perspective and through the lens of underwriters. We will examine simple rules to improve the insurance underwriting decision to judge whether a risk is insurable and whether they have impact on increasing underwriting decision quality.

Description: How to make the third pillar of the pension system develop faster is a hot topic in the field of social security research in recent years. Its development is facing three dilemmas: cognitive dilemma, economic transformation dilemma and incentive dilemma. According to the order from easy to difficult, four suggestions are put forward: to build the third pillar system by introducing personal accounts; to separate individual accounts from urban and rural residence insurance and put them in the third pillar; to integrate housing funds into the third pillar; to turn short-term bank savings into long-term pension reserve by improving social welfare.

Description: Editor’s note: This is the first article in a series of three covering the Society of Actuaries (SOA) Competency Framework. The subsequent articles will appear in future issues of the Actuary of the Future newsletter. The Society of Actuaries (SOA) Competency Framework is a powerful tool to enable you to design your future. Though it has been the SOA’s instrument for prioritizing continuing education and support to members since 2010, many actuaries are still not fully aware what a potent tool it can be to them in planning their personal careers.

Description: As the topic of affordable long-term care (LTC) insurance comes into focus in political conversations, we often find ourselves thinking, “What is going to happen to the private LTC insurance industry going forward?” The need for LTC in the United States is not going away, especially as the population continues to age. With this in mind, this article explores three possible future paths for LTC insurance funding and the associated implications for the private LTC industry.

Description: Many retirement actuaries have experience developing, implementing, and monitoring Liability Driven Investing (LDI) strategies for plan sponsors. These strategies typically involve modifying a plan’s investment strategy to remove a significant portion of the investment and interest rate risk now or at some point in the future when specific triggers are met. The tactics often involve the use of fixed income assets to cash flow and/or duration match the liabilities. In the spirit of helping actuaries expand their roles in an evolving defined contribution world, this article explores the application of LDI and derisking strategies within defined contribution and individual retirement accounts. The economic theory behind this approach is called the lifecycle hypothesis, or lifecycle finance. The benefits of the lifecycle finance method are that it provides a safe approach to save for retirement and a secure source of floor income during retirement. Similar to pension plans, each individual has his or her own idiosyncratic needs, wants, and risks that should be considered. Actuaries are uniquely situated to help defined contribution plan sponsors, individuals, and even themselves implement the lifecycle finance approach by developing and distributing tools and methods that focus on income (rather than wealth), LDI strategies, and personalization.

Description: July 2019 issue of Small Talk by the Smaller Insurance Company Section. Practical information for actuaries, trends that impact section, and section activities.

Description: The August/September 2014 edition of The Actuary magazine—the Society of Actuaries’ flagship publication.