Description: This paper demonstrates an approach of modeling experience, and then interpreting the model and residual errors.

Description: Discusses how a small health insurance company may be able to create and successfully maintain its wealth through careful actuarial model considerations used in calculating reserves. A traditional and a conservative approach to calculating the reserves are compared. The conservative approach was found particularly useful when estimating reserves for an individual health insurance company with numerous product lines each relatively small in volume.

Description: Survey of appointed actuaries about asset adequacy testing techniques currently being used in 2012.

Description: A defined contribution plan with a defined benefit minimum guarantee is valued as a put option or exchange option. This paper compares the resulting price with the actual additional contribution rate used by one public sector plan, and considers extensions of the option theory to allow more accurately for the pension plan characteristics.

Description: Nonparametric regression tries to ?nd a relationship between the predictor and the response without assuming shape of estimated regression function. Its theory and methods are well developed for the case of completely observed vectors of predictors and responses. In many applications, including actuarial, some components of the observed vectors may be missed. Ignoring missing data and using known methods of nonparametric regression may yield inconsistent estimation. Theoretical results on optimal nonparametric regression with missing data are presented, and an applied actuarial example is discussed.

Description: The purpose of this study is to provide the actuarial profession with a review of the actuarial aspects of cash balance retirement plans and original actuarial research regarding the design and valuation of such plans. This report discusses cash balance plan features and methods to measure the associated risks.

Description: This is the final report of a survey of life insurance companies on the cost of implementing the new principle-based statutory accounting framework.

Description: Research project that assesses the accuracy of commonly used IBNR estimation methods for medical insurance over a wide range of scenarios. The methods are summarized, practical considerations in making the comparisons and the development of the data simulations for the comparisons are discussed.

Description: The series expansion of a probability density function, known to actuaries by Esscher's name and to statisticians as the saddlepoint approximation, typically gets integrated to approximate probability values under the density, with a location parameter in the expansion chosen to optimize convergence of the integrated series. We review the general form, the accuracy and the derivation of the Esscher approximation. Then we propose using related series expansions for the derivative of a probability density function to approximate the value of the point of maximum likelihood for the density. The key is to make the value of the location parameter an unknown and assume it to be the point of maximum likelihood, which leads to a tractable optimization problem to find its value.

Description: Examines historical life insurance and annuity policyholder mortality improvement trends and/or mortality improvement rates and how they compare to that of the general US and international populations. Discusses techniques for modeling and projecting future mortality improvements