Description: The author discusses an interpretation of the surrender charge limitations specified in New York’s Regulation 77 which increases the maximum allowable surrender charges for renewal years. This interpretation was presented to and accepted by the New York State Insurance Department.

Description: The Universal Life Work Group ULWG of the American Academy of Actuaries’ AAA Life Valuation Subcommittee was formed in July 2004. Its charge is to develop a new “principle-based” approach definition follows for statutory reserves and capital requirements for life products with certain types of benefits and guarantees, where the value of the contract obligations vary significantly due to such things as future interest rates or equity returns.

Description: Discussion of growth in popularity of UL products designed to focus on the guarantee of death benefit protection rather than cash value accumulation and some of the pricing and reserving issues with respect to those products

Description: Milliman, Inc. recently conducted a comprehensive survey of leading UL insurers to discover current dynamics of the UL market. The scope of the survey included UL with secondary guarantees ULSG, cash accumulation UL, current assumption UL, and indexed UL.

Description: Universal Life/Indexed Universal Life trends based on the 6th annual Milliman survey of leading UL carriers. Reveals the current dynamics of the UL/IUL market and provides carriers with competitive benchmarking to see how they stand relative to their peers.

Description: Key excerpts from research recently performed by Milliman consultants for the SOA on the impact of VM-20 on life insurance product development.

Description: Article includes a summary of Milliman's 10th annual survey of leading UL and IUL industry competitors. Product and actuarial issues are covered.

Description: Introduction to Private Placement VUL

Description: This article provides a summary of the key findings from Milliman's 8th annual survey of lading UL carriers. The survey covers issues and challenges of UL/IUL products and allows companies to benchmark their practices against the competition.

Description: Discussion of American Academy of Actuaries Illustrations Work Group. This article deals specifically with the issue of using mortality improvement assumptions in the illustrations prohibited by the Model Illustration Regulation, suspected in some cases because some UL products incorporate low cost of insurance charges in late durations as part of their product design.