Description: Microinsurance mechanisms provide coverage to low income earners, but a growing middle class is often lacking adequate access to insurance services. The author explores ways in which insurance may be more accessible.

Description: Long-term guarantees place unanticipated burdens on companies because of the degree to which the environment can change. These risks are compounded when combined with estimation of policyholder behavior, especially when solid experience data is not available. When risks are properly reflected, long-term guarantees do not always provide value to the customer in excess of the manufacturing cost. The product development actuary is challenged to compare customer value to company cost and use that measurement to identify novel ways to design products to better serve customers.

Description: The CAS is pleased to present its Research Paper, “Users’ Guide to Economic Scenario Generation in Property-Casualty Insurance”. Although there are cases in the literature about the use of economic scenario generators (ESGs) in the property casualty industry, they are far more commonly used for life insurance companies. Our hope is that this paper will serve as a comprehensive guide to the implementation of ESGs in the non-life space and spark interest in research into new applications of ESGs.

Description: In insurance companies and pension plans currency risk arises when a company has future obligations in one currency and investments in another currency. The question that is often asked is whether this currency risk should hedged or not.

Description: This article is the second installment in a three-part series on economic scenario generators (“ESGs”). Part I was published in the November 2019 issue. Part II addresses critical considerations in selecting, building, using, and validating ESGs. The article discusses key criteria in understanding ESGs including: - Risk factors - Scenario type - Process and parameterization - Calibration - Number of scenarios - Timing considerations

Description: Discusses the market, demographic, and macroeconomic factors that affect actuaries' choices for the assumptions they use in the pricing and valuation of many insurance products.

Description: Given the rise in interest rates during 2022, join an insightful discussion on the implications of increasing rates on fixed annuity (FA) and fixed index annuity (FIA) business by looking at industry experience for FA and FIA products for 2022 compared to earlier years. Additionally, you will walk through partial withdrawals, guaranteed lifetime withdrawal benefit (GLWB) utilization, mortality and what to expect as interest rate volatility continues.

Description: Guidance and a model for actuaries to use when performing their professional services related to Medicaid (Title XIX) and Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP or Title XXI) managed care capitation rate setting.

Description: The aftershocks of the COVID pandemic will pass --- eventually. Government subsidies and spending soared in 2020 to meet the challenges of the pandemic. Health expenditures leapt from 17.6% of GDP to 19.7%, and then dropped to 18.8% in 2021, and will fall again to 18.2% (projected) in 2022, but are expected to return to the long-run trend by 2024 and gradually rise thereafter. However, during the next few years most attention will be paid to dealing with complex aftershocks from the flood of Covid funding in 2020 and 2021, a surge of inflation in 2022, and a looming recession in 2023.

Description: Occasionally, in the financial reporting world the stars align, and insurers get the opportunity to leverage their financial results and cashflows across multiple reporting use cases. Such opportunity came about with implementation of the U.S. generally accepted accounting practices (GAAP) long-duration targeted improvements (LDTI) accounting standard, that required companies to move away from locked-in assumptions for traditional life and limited-pay products and produce best estimate liability cashflows for these business lines.