Description: The article urges actuaries to see AI not just as a tool but as a strategic partner, drawing parallels to past transformative technologies like the printing press. Using NAIC survey data, it shows AI adoption is surging in health and auto insurance, lagging in life. It outlines AI’s potential to boost productivity, improve data quality, and enhance contract analysis, while warning actuaries to master AI before others use it to evaluate their work. Ethical standards demand transparency and fairness, making responsible AI use part of professional duty. Historical examples—like James C.H. Anderson’s 1970s cash flow testing breakthroughs—highlight how visionary actuaries can redefine the profession. The article applies Harvard professor Jeff Bussgang’s “hair-on-fire” innovation lens, suggesting AI-powered, urgency-driven insurance products, akin to Y2K coverage, could revolutionize offerings. It calls on actuaries to address protection gaps, discrimination, and industry opacity through AI-enabled fairness. The message: courage, creativity, and proactive adoption will let actuaries shape—not just survive—the AI-driven future. The closing reflects on the author’s tenure with the SOA Reinsurance Newsletter, framing this as a final, forward-looking call to action for actuaries ready to lead in a transformed insurance landscape.

Description: This article highlights the findings of a recent SOA survey on accelerated underwriting (AU) practices, including the amount of AU business ceded, the results of three opinion questions, and an estimate of mortality slippage among AU programs.

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: Discusses Internal Revenue Service Ruling 2011-9. Since ruling now applies to all taxpayers, not just the taxpayer in a prior private letter ruling, taxpayers that have taken a contrary position in past tax years may need to amend prior tax returns.

Description: Author highlights historical nonforfeiture and federal tax law changes, as they have impacted life product designs, in prognosticating about future product designs.

Description: Congress has acted in recent years to remove outdated provisions governing the federal income taxation of life insurance companies from the Internal Revenue Code. In particular, section 809 and section 815 were repealed and suspended, respectively, in 2004. This article chronicles the demise of these provisions and explains why Congress was right in removing them from the Code.

Description: This article is a discussion about the life settlement industry and the tax considerations for life insurance bought and sold in the secondary market.

Description: This article is a discussion of the proposal to tax the inside build-up in life insurance policies and the consequences if it were to be adopted.

Description: Updates on partial annuitization and exhanges, prevailing CSO valuation mortality tables, disclosure of offshore accounts through FATCA.

Description: This article discusses final Treasury Regulations published in October 2019 under Internal Revenue Code sections 101 and 6050Y. The regulations cover new tax reporting requirements for transfers and sales of life insurance contracts, as well as changes to the transfer-for-value rules related to reportable policy sales