Description: Chaucer's Canterbury Tales is more than just sexual farces and fart jokes. In the Tale of Melibee, Chaucer imparts wisdom on choosing advisors, soliciting advice, and judging advice. This is informed by Chaucer's experience as a royal official, as well as his great education.

Description: One of the most fundamental concepts in actuarial practice is the time value of money. For any work in which future cash flows are allowed for, such as reserving or pricing, it is natural to discount to present values so that an appropriate amount of money can be set aside today, allowing for future investment returns. This article discusses yield curve extrapolation methods along with the benefits and drawbacks of these methods.

Description: Product development is variously described as a science, an art, or a philosophy. Six Sigma suffers from the same ambiguity—it is a statistical measure, a business philosophy, a process, a methodology, and a way of living! But by combining the two, we are able to apply structure to creativity and enable product success

Description: Overview of a recent visit to silicon valley and how the learnings from this trip can be applied in an insurance setting.

Description: This article covers the importance of a system peer review within the systems change control process and offers suggestions for creating more robust controls.

Description: This editorial highlights the peer review process that all articles in the newsletter go through.

Description: The August/September 2013 edition of The Actuary magazine—the Society of Actuaries’ flagship publication.

Description: The article summarizes two of the highest rated sessions sponsored by the Reinsurance Section during the 2013 SOA Annual Meeting in San Diego.