Description: The presenters will discuss a paper, initiated by the SOA's Experience Studies Executive Committee, that presents the various rate calculations used in experience studies for different lines of business.

Description: There will be no easy resolution to the current trade friction between the U.S. and China. If anything, the motivations for increasing protectionism are set to intensify. What are these motivations? Where is this trade war headed? And what impact could this have on economies and financial markets?

Description: Presenters will discuss mortality improvement as it applies to various lines of business with an emphasis on how individual life findings can be used to fine tune group life assumptions. In particular, it is important to know that there is not a single percentage of annual mortality improvement. Rather, experience shows that the rate of mortality improvement varies by factors such as attained age and target market.

Description: The presenters will cover the latest research undertaken by the Individual Life Experience Committee (ILEC). With several years of very robust individual life insurance experience data accumulated through the mandatory Statistical Agent data calls, this vast amount of data allows for various deeper dives into specific segments of business, such as large face amount, older age or juvenile. Speakers will cover studies the committee is currently involved in, future planned efforts, and results from a variety of sub-segments of business. Attendees will learn about emerging statistical techniques in scrubbing data, more refined quintile-grouped data segments, and interesting ways of conceptualizing how A/E results have changed from year to year. There will be something for everyone!

Description: The discount rate is one of the most critical topics in IFRS 17 and may have important repercussions on product profitability. The presenters will cover practical implementation considerations, including alternative approaches to illiquidity premium calculation for business supported by fixed assets with credit risks. Other implementation considerations will also be covered, including granularity of setting the discount rate, application to new business, and implications on asset and liability modeling. The presenters will then discuss how discount rates could be utilized in an Economic Scenario Generator (ESG) to assist IFRS17 calculations, particularly for risk-neutral valuation of the time value of options and guarantees.

Description: Risk management techniques such as stress testing and setting capital targets are fairly well established for life insurers; however, the implementation of these techniques can vary considerably. A fundamental question is how to manage multiple valuation perspectives, and the list of possibilities keeps growing. Companies can potentially consider some or all of the following: U.S. reporting measures (Stat, GAAP), internal measures (EV, VNB, economic capital), international reporting measures (IFRS), rating agency models or other developing standards (ICS, NAIC group capital). This session will begin with a quick overview of the defining characteristics of different valuation frameworks. We will then provide more focused and practical considerations for managing risk and capital under different frameworks, using specific examples to highlight key trade offs.

Description: Characteristics of Asian Indexed Executive Options. Presented at August 2011 Actuarial Research Conference.

Description: Regulatory change and increased focus on internal risk management are driving a renewed interest in model efficiency. In this session, we will review several new and existing tools, that show significant promise for advanced modeling of equity linked products. These include: • Clustering • Use of unique--and potentially a different number of--scenarios for each policy • Semi Monte Carlo (SMC) – this is a proprietary technique that is similar to a combination of Monte Carlo and numeric integration • Using a neural network approach to optimize some of the more complex and manual aspects of clustering and improve the fit of the clustered model • Combining SMC with the use of unique scenarios per policy

Description: Retirees will face the societal issue of inadequate savings with likely insufficient time to rectify the situation. They need immediate growth, but also the disciplines of risk management. They typically do not know how to engage with these two aspects in a harmonious manner on their own. Insurance companies are in the business of providing the solution but regulators have been clamping down in favor of simpler and more transparent products. In addition, the market reality over the last decade has been that insurers have stock betas at a multiple to the general markets with PE ratios well below. A panel of senior professionals from writers of retirement product business will present their vision of how the insurance industry can address the above dilemma, including the risks underlying the writing of the business, impact of financial markets, and regulations in the development of the business.

Description: Artificial Intelligence (AI) is expected to change the insurance industry more in the next 10 years than it has changed in the past 100 years. Rapid advancements in computing power and the exponential growth of Big Data are creating more opportunities to incorporate AI techniques and methodologies into actuarial work. This session is for the practicing actuary who would like to learn more about AI and how to use it to analyze insurance data. At the conclusion of the session, attendees will be able to understand the fundamentals of AI, to build an AI model and to identify AI opportunities in their work.