Description: Update on section activities from the chairperson.

Description: The column summarizes tax and retirement matters that ACLI and its member companies have been actively addressing. These include IRS 2015-2016 priority guidance items, the Department of Labor proposed fiduciary rule, proposed IRS hedge fund reinsurance rules, and new IRS notional principal contract rules.

Description: The author discusses how small firms can compete successfully against big firms by cre¬ating a micro-niche business, because other firms—including big firms—cannot compete directly. In this way a small firm can compete against large firms with great success by stepping outside direct competi¬tion, in which it cannot hope to win. From ‘The Stepping Stone’ issue number 43.

Description: This essay, submitted for the Society of Actuaries' Entrepreneurial Actuaries Section 2010 Papers Competition, proposes an entrepreneurial solution to address the continued, unsustainable increases in health care costs. Under the author’s plan, entrepreneurs will “develop systems providing clear financial motivation for consumers to make decisions that minimize health care spending and maximize positive health outcomes. In so doing, health care providers must necessarily compete to offer the highest quality services at the lowest cost. By relying on the financial self-interest of consumers and free-market competition among health care providers, effective and sustainable systems to bend the health care cost curve can be achieved.”

Description: This article discusses challenges that short-term predictions have on actuaries' reputations, both as individuals and as a profession, and discusses strategies to improve our professionalism and better manage this risk.

Description: Introduction of the Leadership & Development 20th Anniversary Special Edition of The Stepping Stone.

Description: This study is intended to educate insurance professionals on historical insurer impairments and insolvencies and possible future prevention indicators.

Description: Review of The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right by Atul Gawande, and author insight into the importance of actuarial checklists.

Description: This column lists articles and other forms of media The Actuary’s contributing editors feel will be of interest to their fellow actuaries.