Description: Join us for the morning session to kick off the conference, including an opening address from 2021-2022 SOA President and Chair Jennifer L. Gillespie, FSA, MAAA. Gain new perspectives from keynote speaker Mico Yuk, chief data influencer, Count.co, and Analytics on Fire Podcast host through her presentation on how to harness data for insightful storytelling.

Description: Discuss interaction between defined benefit (DB) plans and defined contribution (DC) plans. Hear more about the impact of DB plans on DC plan design and vice versa. Learn about the differences in DB and DC plan governance and cross-over opportunities between these plan solutions.

Description: Long-term care (LTC) benefits are sold less these days as a standalone product and more commonly as a hybrid product with a life insurance or annuity chassis. In this 'Shark Tank' game show, the LTC benefit scrutinizes traditional, variable, and indexed life, and annuity product chassis in search of a winning combination.

Description: In this session, we will explore recent industry-wide studies focusing on mortality and policyholder behavior patterns across both Life and LTC lines of business. The Life study analyzes extensive data collected over 2018-2022, providing a unique perspective on trends heading into, during, and emerging from the pandemic. The study covers 2.5 million deaths and over 5 million voluntary surrenders and fund lapses across term and permanent life products. The LTC analysis will focus on the components of policyholder termination, with an additional perspective of total termination patterns prior to, during and post-pandemic periods. The analysis will examine cohorts of policyholders to identify the area of largest deviations from expectation and how that translated into short term results as well as where we are today. The aggregation of experience across participating companies provides insights into areas where a particular insurer’s data is not credible on its own, including: older ages, preferred/standard classes and more. At the conclusion, attendees will have an understanding of how experience emerged and considerations for setting assumptions going forward.

Description: This session will discuss basic and advanced hedge modeling concepts. It will explain common hedge strategies used to support guarantees and options embedded within life and annuity products and the materiality of these products within the US. Attendees will learn how Machine Learning acts to reduce the computer processing needed to simulate the dynamic hedging of product liabilities projected in the future across many stochastic scenarios. Actuaries working in consulting, software development, and a large life insurance company will provide a wide range of hedging viewpoints ranging from a broad industry perspective to a hedging practitioner. Attendees will obtain a comprehensive understanding of a novel ML approach to modeling dynamic hedges and the hedge optimization opportunity it presents.

Description: What are the recent expectations of long-term trends in mortality? What are the limits to improvements in longevity? Join us as we review the factors impacting U.S. population mortality in the eyes of demographers. By the end of this session, you will have an awareness of the major causes of mortality and how they are trending.

Description: The world has shrunk and there is no going back. In today’s post-pandemic business landscape, actuaries are frequently being asked to collaborate or lead within multicultural teams dispersed across the globe. The question is, how should companies go about maintaining a sense of team connection across teams that are geographically and demographically different?

Description: Join us as we explore Medigap claims assumptions and more. What has been driving cost increases? Does the trend vary by market? How are area factors determined? What opportunities exist for niche carriers? This session will provide a fresh experience-based perspective on key pricing considerations and leave you with food for thought as you manage your business.

Description: After 10 years, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) risk adjustment program has evolved as the ACA has evolved. In recent years the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has focused on predictive accuracy over compensating for actuarial risk and has failed to address systemic issues such as insolvencies that created suboptimal outcomes for the ACA markets.

Description: How is extreme weather impacting you? If you live in California, you may have been impacted by the atmospheric rivers unleashing record-breaking rain and snow last winter. If you live in Canada or near Canada, you may have been impacted by the wildfires raging last spring. NASA has declared that the summer of 2023 was the hottest on record.