Description: The presenters will explore the current state of the North American mortality baseline and long-term improvement assumptions and determine what we can learn from the UK's approach. They will share research done by the Society of Actuaries and other organizations to describe how to build a better model, plus show the impact socio-economics and other factors have on longevity expectations. The presenters will offer suggestions for how U.S. and Canadian pension plan and insurance actuaries--and the industry itself--can best use this research to develop a better model for the risk management of pension plans and group annuities

Description: This session will look into life insurers’ anticipated business impacts as a result of the implementation of the new accounting standard for insurance contracts, IFRS 17. What will be the financial impact as of day one as a result of transition? How will embedded value for common life insurance products change? How will costs of reinsurance be affected? Will products have to be re-designed and/or re-priced? IFRS 17 may have more ramifications into the way insurers are doing business than we have anticipated so far. While we are working on the implementation of this new standard, we should not lose sight of the business impacts that will follow. At the conclusion of the session, attendees will be able to: Understand key impacts of the transition to IFRS 17; See illustrative examples of the impact on embedded value; and Understand key impacts on product design and pricing Country Relevance: US and Canada

Description: Reinsurance reduces the required capital of the primary insurer but increases that of the reinsurer. Capital is costly. All capital costs, including that of the insurer and the reinsurer, are ultimately borne by primary policyholders. Reducing the total capital of insurers and reinsurers brings down the total capital cost and the total primary policy premium. A reinsurance arrangement is considered optimal—if it minimizes the total required capital. This optimal reinsurance is an attracting equilibrium under price competition. Evidence suggests an inverse relationship between the total required capital and the correlation between the losses held by different insurers and reinsurers. Examples are constructed to examine this and other properties of the optimal reinsurance.

Description: What will be left of the reinsurance marketplace when the consolidations are over?

Description: An article in the form of a fictional letter to the editor and response dealing with the complexities of the current reinsurance market.

Description: Monica Hainer, FSA, FCIA, MAAA, chief executive officer of London Life Reinsurance Company in Blue Bell, Penn., is the 2008 recipient of the ACLI Forum 500’s Distinguished Service Award. She received the award at the Forum 500’s Leadership Retreat in Washington, D.C. on May 14.

Description: Reinsurance is a global business, yet reinsurers suffer from widely disparate accounting and regulatory requirements from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, particularly in the areas of credit for reinsurance and collateral requirements. Recently, insurance regulators in the United States and worldwide have taken dramatic steps toward harmonization, mutual recognition and regulatory cooperation in connection with regulation of reinsurance, with a focus on modernizing collateral requirements.

Description: Departing chairman’s column recapping past accomplishments and describing future section initiatives.

Description: Refocus, the premier life insurance industry conference, will be celebrating 10 years of continuous growth. The next conference will be in March 2016. This interview discusses how the founding committee members evolved the conference from a Reinsurance focus to a broader focus.

Description: This article charts out a basic framework that should be utilized when undergoing optimization of reinsurance arrangements.