Description: Three papers use sophisticated actuarial methods to develop a straightforward retirement income strategy that can be implemented in virtually any IRA or 401(k).

Description: Response to Life Insurance 2020 Foresight – A Call for Essays. An essay stating the author’s vision for the future of the life insurance sector. Focus is on the long term guarantee embedded in the basic life insurance contract to pay the death benefit.

Description: Response to Life Insurance 2020 Foresight – A Call for Essays. An essay stating the author’s vision for the future of the life insurance sector.

Description: Here we are led to draw a distinction between “wild” markets and “free” markets. A wild market is unregulated and unscrutinized. Information flows are purposely impeded for competitive reasons and reduced to trickles from rumor and espionage. No one knows what anyone else is doing, and pricing is blind and haphazard. In such a market, there are no safeguards against anticompetitive behavior and no guarantees that the market will clear. The only guarantee is that there will be liquidity crises.

Description: The roots of the crisis are understood on a simplified basis, by 3 Ls: a Lack of accountability b Leverage and c Liquidity. Historically, people requiring mortgages sought their mortgages from local institutions that would conduct the evaluation and hold the risk. Loan officers of these institutions were accountable for the outcomes of their decisions – defaults were a direct reflection on their judgment. Leverage was a second key factor. Institutions guaranteed mortgages against default. The third L, liquidity, because a problem. When property values eventually evidenced their inevitable fall, defaults occurred at historically high rates.

Description: The central question is that of viability. Specifically, is the configuration of life insurers’ products and balance sheets economically viable under current accounting and ongoing market conditions?

Description: The current financial crisis underscores the need for companies to take a sobering look at their approach to risk management. Among the many lessons to be learned, one is immediately clear: The subprime debacle represents a failure in risk management, rather than a failure of risk management.

Description: Property-liability insurers use reinsurance as a cost-efficient substitute for capital, but in a disruptive event, reinsurance prices and availability can change sharply.

Description: This Index covers all Society of Actuaries material published in 1992 and 1993.

Description: The following list indicates the Society of Actuaries publications covered by this Index, the abbreviations used in the citations, and the issues covered.