Description: This document is from the March 2025 edition of the SOA Research Institute AI Bulletin, focusing on artificial intelligence initiatives within the actuarial community. It includes articles on strategic principles, professional development products, NAIC updates, and tips for prompting the language model.

Description: Decentralized insurance alternatives is a rapidly expanding sector of Decentralized Finance (DeFi), an emerging and growing financial ecosystem powered by blockchain technologies. The purpose of this report is to review and discuss the business models and operating designs of decentralized insurance alternatives, which may have significant implications for traditional insurance businesses, as well as the actuarial profession.

Description: The Casualty Actuarial Society, the Society of Actuaries Research Institute, the Society of Actuaries Joint Risk Management, Reinsurance and Financial Reporting Sections are pleased to make available key findings from the 2022 Emerging Risks Survey, the sixteenth in the series. Conducted by Max J. Rudolph of Rudolph Financial Consulting LLC, the survey incorporated a set of Emerging Risks defined by the World Economic Forum as the basis for several of the questions. The survey also included questions related to current risk management topics.

Description: On January 12, 2023, the Arizona Blockchain Applied Research Center (AZ BARC) and the SOA Research Institute jointly ran a workshop on the use of blockchain technology in insurance and financial industries. The workshop included presentations focused on academic research in the blockchain space by Arizona State University, AZ BARC and an industry expert panel assembled by the SOA Research Institute. This document summarizes the research highlights and the discussions that occurred during the two-hour workshop.

Description: In April of 2023, the SOA Research Institute assembled an industry expert panel to discuss current issues in actuarial technology. This was the fourth time such a panel was assembled, and most panelists had participated in the previous discussions.

Description: The Society of Actuaries (SOA) Research Institute released a report summarizing the InsurTech Insights Americas conference held May 24-26, 2022. InsurTech, a concept created 10-15 years ago, is maturing and currently western financial markets are recording a downward trend while inflation is rising. While this downward pressure on financing makes investors more cautious, stakeholders are working towards partnerships to improve the overall effectiveness and purpose of the insurance industry.

Description: Decentralized finance, or DeFi, is an emerging financial system powered by blockchain technology. This research report aims to introduce actuaries to DeFi and help them develop a solid understanding of DeFi. It will begin with addressing “what is DeFi?” by providing an introduction on blockchains and DeFi. It will then discuss in further detail the key characteristics, applications, opportunities, and risks of DeFi. After providing the foundation, this report will discuss the potential adoption of DeFi and its interaction with the current financial system (sometime referred to as traditional finance for contrast with DeFi), and the implications for practicing and aspiring actuaries. In addition, a glossary of terms used in DeFi and a brief history of the development of DeFi have been included in the appendix.

Description: The journey for microinsurance, nowadays called inclusive insurance, started a long time ago and is not complete in the majority of the low-income and low middle-income markets. When seeking to enhance inclusive insurance markets, it is useful and necessary to have a good understanding because it entails a different treatment of customers, distribution, products, pricing, client management, premium collection, claims declaration and settlement, and reporting.