Description: This article describes the nature and features of collateralized mortgage obligations [CMO], identifies their key risk factors, and suggests steps that small insurers can take to effectively and economically model them.

Description: This article briefly summarizes the history of the Passive Foreign Investment Company (PFIC) tax regime. Then it provides a detailed description of the PFIC proposed regulations issued in July of 2019.

Description: This article shows how market participants’ view of risk impacts not just their own choices, but also how they impact on everyone else's choices as well.

Description: Measuring Fair Value for Participation Units of Stable Value Pooled Funds

Description: The Case Against Stock in Corporate Pension Funds

Description: Actuarial Assumptions for Pension Plans Invite Arbitrage The Case of Pension Obligation Bonds by Jeremy Gold from Risks and Rewards Newsletter, September 2000, Issue No. 35.

Description: The purpose of this paper is to present to the actuarial profession a stochastic investment model which can be used for simulations extending for many years ahead. Discussed in the paper are the general reasons for choosing the style of model, the general model and how to use it, the assumptions and the sensitivity of model to the assumptions made and the possible applications in the investment and actuarial fields.

Description: Interest rates steadily declining ever since the Volcker Fed tackled inflation in the early eighties. Ten years of stimulating monetary policy brought new lows. We should have braced ourselves for a return to neutrality, but that concept remains elusive. We will explore structural issues that have brought rates to these low levels and the potential impacts on the insurance business.

Description: Our previous article, “Introduction of Cashflow Matching Strategic Asset Allocation (SAA) Framework,” introduced the concept and included a real-world case study that developed a liability-driven investment strategy for a single line of business (LOB) for a life insurer. This article expands the framework and the case study from a single LOB to simultaneously optimize asset allocation across multiple LOBs. It discusses how this multi-line SAA framework can enable an insurance company to efficiently tag its asset holdings to each LOB, identify opportunities in the public and private asset markets to enhance risk-adjusted returns, and develop a deeper understanding of the trade-off between the degree of cashflow matching and risk-adjusted returns across LOBs.