Description: Call for essays on catastrophe modeling for life & health insurance focusing on impacts of the L.A. wildfires. Topics include risk modeling, insurability considerations, catastrophe event management, and AI's role. Submissions open until June 2025, offering up to $10,000 in awards for selected essays. Publication will follow with author attribution.

Description: On November 30, 2021, the SOA Research Institute assembled an industry expert panel to discuss current issues in actuarial technology. Each participant who volunteered to be part of the discussion was selected because of their management-level responsibilities for the application of technology in an actuarial context. The group was diverse in terms of employment, including company actuaries from life, health, and property/casualty backgrounds, as well as consultants from various kinds of firms. This document summarizes the discussion that occurred during the three-hour meeting. To encourage candor during the discussion, participants were assured that this report would not attribute comments to individuals or companies, so no names appear in the body of the report. The names of those who participated are included at the end of the report.

Description: This paper compares two mortality projection models – the latest version of the CMI Mortality Projections Model and the latest version of MIM-2021.Both models were applied to data for England & Wales and the US, and the results were compared.

Description: This paper concerns policyholder dividends on traditional participating life insurance products in regulatory contexts similar to those in the United States and Canada. This paper also touches on annuity products. It was prepared for use in the educational curriculum of the Society of Actuaries. Dividend actuaries seeking references to writings on policyholder dividends to refresh their perspective may also find it useful.

Description: This report describes the main features of structured settlement annuities in North America and current actuarial practices and issues related to this product. It was prepared for use in the educational curriculum of the Society of Actuaries.

Description: The topic of this virtual Open House was the SOA’s InsurTech Program. There was a presentation and a question-and-answer session.

Description: To broaden knowledge in emerging issues and topics, the REC is seeking researchers to submit one or more proposals. Sample topics below have been identified as focus areas by the REC. The description of each of the topics has deliberately been written to be brief and open-ended to give researchers sufficient latitude in the development of their proposals. Researchers should not feel constrained by these topics, as many other relevant topics continuously emerge.

Description: The Committee on Life Insurance Mortality and Underwriting Surveys of the Society of Actuaries Research Institute sent companies a survey in May of 2019 on mortality improvement practices. Note this survey was completed prior to the onset of COVID-19, so that issue was not addressed in this survey. The purpose of the survey was to examine mortality improvement practices with respect to life insurance and annuity pricing and financial projections in both the U.S. and Canada.

Description: In 2024, 27 disasters in the United States resulted in damages exceeding $1 billion. These disasters included two winter storms, one wildfire event, one drought/heatwave event, one flooding event, six tornado outbreaks, 11 severe weather/hail events and five hurricanes. The costliest of these events was Hurricane Helene, which resulted in 219 deaths and cost $79.6 billion , although the early 2025 wildfires in the Los Angeles, California area threaten to exceed this economic cost. In Canada, insured catastrophic losses totaled C$8.5 billion in 2024, making it the costliest year on record for the country. Outside the United States and Canada, Cyclone Chido killed more than 1,000 people, a heatwave in Bangladesh impacted 33 million people and a drought in Columbia has had a significant impact on the economy there .

Description: The Society of Actuaries (SOA) Research Institute hosted a virtual Open House on Wednesday, April 19, 2023, from 2:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. Central. The topic of this virtual Open House was the Institute’s Actuarial Innovation & Technology Strategic Research Program. There was a presentation and a question-and-answer session.