Description: Life and annuity markets around the world have seen increasingly complex investment-combined products, including universal life, fixed indexed annuities, variable annuities with a wide variety of guaranteed benefits, indexed variable annuities, etc. Insurance companies are facing unprecedented exposure to financial risks in addition to traditional mortality and longevity risks. The risk assessment and modeling for such complex designs by conventional methods often focus heavily on their market competitiveness and profitability. However, there seems to be a lack of quantifiable and systematic approach to assess investment risks associated with investment combined products. The objective of the proposed work is to develop a framework for quantifying and analyzing various forms of contractual designs and showcase different techniques to assess the trade-off between competitive contractual designs and their practical implications with regard to the difficulty of risk management.

Description: This article examines the changes in U.S. regulatory reserve and risk-based capital requirements that will significantly impact the insurance industry and practicing actuaries. It summarizes activity related to principles-based reserves and risk-based capital initiatives during 2005.

Description: In the past decade, U.S. life and annuity insurance companies’ utilization of asset-intensive reinsurance internal reinsurance has grown significantly. Many reinsurers and insurers have set up entities or affiliates in Cayman, with many more in the pipeline. Here we will discuss Cayman’s reinsurance market growth momentum, and the main benefits that Cayman offers.

Description: In this article, we collected data from the companies’ roll-forward disclosures related to calendar years 2021 and 2022 on Market Risk Benefit and shared a high-level summary of the Market Risk Benefit volatility that a focus group of companies incurred and summarized the most common ways to mitigate volatility.

Description: This article presents the idea that a New Product Notebook, which contains all of the aspects of a product's development and is accessible to all involved, can make the product development process more efficient.

Description: it discusses the framework and modeling of the market consistent valuation of fixed indexed annuity, against the backdrop of the convergence of accounting standards and internal risk management.

Description: IRS published final regulations on updated life expectancy and distribution period tables used for determining RMDs. The article intends to provide an overview on the development of the final regulations and highlight the key updates in final regulations, the transition rules to apply final regulations and some of the relevant issues not addressed in final regulations (e.g. MITT, Rev. Rul. 2002-62 and Notice 2004-15). The article also briefly discusses what financial institutions and actuaries would like to do before the regulations become effective on Jan. 1, 2022.

Description: Examines the trends affecting the distribution system for the industry's products, and the regulatory and tax environment in which life companies operate. Also looks briefly at the state of competition in the industry.

Description: A jurisdiction’s regulatory regime can make some insurance products capital intensive to write. This can increase incentives for insurers to enter into risk transfer arrangements, such as reinsurance, to support their business and growth objectives.