Description: The SOA Research Institute tasked the Workforce Science Institute to investigate how retirement benefit plans can affect a plan sponsor’s workforce and business results. The following is an interview with Rick Guzzo and Haig Nalbantian co-founders of the Workforce Science Institute who are the researchers on this project. The interview gives a helicopter view of the project as well as provides some “food for thought” on how retirement plans can be designed to produce an effective workforce.

Description: This article provides a summary of the research paper and Excel-based tool that can be found on the SOA’s website at Regulatory Capital Adequacy for Life Insurance Companies: A Comparison of Four Jurisdictions | SOA.

Description: In this article, we aim to outline the advantages of smaller programs and gather opinions on the challenges these programs face in their efforts to emphasize these strengths. For our purposes, we define small actuarial programs as those with a relatively low student enrollment count. The following are three key advantages of small programs, which are similar to those of small colleges:(a) Enhanced benefits from small class size; (b) Adaptable curriculum; (c) Increased opportunities for each student. A variety of similar other issues are also discussed with recommendations, challenges, and invitations for further dialogue.

Description: Actuaries can play an active role in social impact toby helping vulnerable communities access otherwise inaccessible insurance that can help increase their climate change resilience and improve their living conditions by lowering the risks that they face.

Description: This paper uses the ideal quasi-natural experiment of government-subsidized agricultural insurance program phased out in different regions of China since 2007 to study the effects and transmission mechanisms of the program on alleviating regional poverty using a multi-period Difference-in-Differences (DID) approach. Specifically, this paper identifies the causal effects on the incidence, depth and intensity of poverty among rural residents. The research has important policy implications. First, this paper uses the program as a case to provide a research paradigm to estimate effects of implementing policy instruments that combine markets and government mandates. Second, as common prosperity is now a government imperative, the research also provides insights into ways insurance can be used to hedge income risks, alleviate poverty and help achieve more equitable distribution. The paper has been published on WeChat account of Chinese Association of Actuaries on February 9, 2022. The full version has been published in CSSCI journal Insurance Research, issue 11, 2021.

Description: In this article, we summarize inflationary factors that may result in a sharp increase in interest rates and implications for life insurer convexity risk exposure, most notably to dynamic policyholder lapsation. We further provide insights into potential ALM strategies to mitigate this convexity risk. Due to the prolonged low-interest rate environment and low minimum interest rate guarantees offered to policyholders, liability convexity is higher than prior historical periods, which results in life insurers’ ALM positions being extremely vulnerable to short-term interest rate spikes. Convexity mismatches cause issues for life insurers under both rising and declining interest rate scenarios. This means that life insurers are not compensated for taking convexity risk and, therefore, convexity matching should always be considered in the asset optimization process. There are mixed signals from policymakers and financial markets regarding potential inflationary and sharply rising interest rate scenarios. The key takeaway is that life insurers are not compensated for taking convexity risk and it is the right time for insurers to review convexity exposure. There are different approaches available to mitigate convexity exposure through rebalancing of asset positions and hedges within each life insurer’s risk limits.

Description: In 2018, the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) adopted significant revisions to the U.S. GAAP insurance accounting literature, via Accounting Standards Update (ASU) 2018-12. The title of ASU 2018-12 is “Targeted Improvements to the Accounting for Long-Duration Contracts,” and as a result, a common acronym for ASU 2018-12 is LDTI (long-duration targeted improvements).

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: SOA Research Institute / University Partnerships for Artificial Intelligence Topics

Description: The SOA Research Institute Catastrophe and Climate Strategic Research Program released a report that explores the shifting geography of Lyme Disease in the U.S. and beyond and some of the potential determinants of its spread. Lyme Disease is a well-known disease particularly in the eastern U.S., and it is also prevalent in other geographies. This report researches the complex relationship between climate variables and the spread of Lyme Disease in the United States.