Description: The article was written to address a concern that the author had that reinsurance considerations were being relegated to the back of the product development cycle. He was concerned that reinsurance input on benefit design, underwriting and pricing was not getting into the process. From Small Talk Newsletter, November 2005, Issue No. 25.

Description: This article is a general discussion about earnings rates and toll charges and how to compute them.

Description: This article is a general discussion about prior correction procedures for failed life insurance contracts and the new IRS procedure for remediation.

Description: With higher interest rates and aging populations, the Bermuda offshore reinsurance market has been heating up, particularly to firms backed by asset management firms and private equity. Increased competition along with changing regulatory requirements, and evolving expectations around model governance have actuaries facing heavier production and results explanation workloads. This creates additional challenges on top of an already complex Bermuda reporting regime, particularly with the Scenarios-Based Approach (SBA) and Bermuda Solvency Capital Requirement (BSCR).

Description: Under long-duration targeted improvements (LDTI), there are a few insurance liability balances that now are required to be fair valued, market risk benefit (MRB). The session will start from all the applicable balances that are required to be fair valued under LDTI ((i.e., MRB, financial accounting statement (FAS) 133, value of business acquired (VOBA) upon business combination)). The session will use a case study to discuss some of the nuances and general considerations for an MRB, FAS 133 and VOBA balances for a business combination for an fixed indexed annuity (FIA) contract. The case study will discuss some MRB fair value considerations and followed by FAS 133 fair value techniques. It will go over VOBA fair value estimation by using actuarial appraisal method with a few twists (e.g., using market yield in generating distributable earnings is better than using book yield and adjusted to bring it to fair value later on).

Description: In this webinar, the presenters will give a behind the scenes look at how the NAIC ESG was parameterized. They will also share the results of its most recent calibration.

Description: Future mortality improvement is an important assumption in the valuation of life insurance. In this session, presenters will discuss the work of the Life Mortality Improvements Subgroup (LMISG) of the Society of Actuaries (SOA) Mortality and Longevity Oversight Advisory Council (MLOAC) developing mortality improvement scales for individual life insurance.

Description: In recent years, there has been a significant increase in life and annuity business transactions transferring blocks of business across jurisdictions. These transactions raise important questions for stakeholders-including policyholders, regulators, rating agencies, investors, and companies themselves-about the drivers of financial results under different regulatory and accounting regimes.As financial reporting frameworks grow more complex-whether US Statutory, IFRS 17, US GAAP, or Solvency II-stakeholders are demanding deeper insights into how results are determined and how they compare across jurisdictions. Understanding these differences is critical for assessing financial performance, capital strength, and risk exposures, particularly in a cross-border context.To address this need, many companies are developing and applying bridging analyses-such as waterfall analyses, step-by-step reconciliations, and other frameworks-to explain how and why results differ between reporting bases. These approaches help clarify key drivers and provide transparency to stakeholders.In this session, representatives from leading companies will share practical approaches they use to bridge these gaps, offering insights into the methodologies and analyses that have proven most effective in navigating cross-jurisdiction financial reporting challenges. Attendees will gain a clearer understanding of cross-jurisdiction reporting differences and take away ideas for applying effective bridging techniques within their own organizations.

Description: Most people will now have had some exposure to Large Language Model tools such as ChatGPT and will have been impressed by their ability to write essays or generate computer code. However, fewer people will be aware of the next phase of AI, which will turn AI chat assistants into more fully fledged AI colleagues. These emerging set of tools come under the broad term of “AI agents”, which are AI-based systems which have capabilities beyond a simple chat interface and are able to interact with external tools, access data, and most importantly have the capability to plan and perform arbitrarily complex tasks. In this talk we will explore the emerging field of AI agents and discuss our experiences using such frameworks to build end-to-end actuarial modelling solutions and demo some POCs we have been working on for the audience. We will also cover topics related to building such complex AI systems including: prompt-engineering fine-tuning retrieval augmented generation function calling specific AI agent frameworks and how they will allow AI to participate in all the different stages of the actuarial modelling process from coding and testing to documentation and analysis.

Description: The Mortality and Longevity and Catastrophe and Climate Strategic Research Programs are pleased to make available a report summarizing an expert panel brought together to discuss the impact of wildfires on U.S. health and life insurers.