Description: The actuary’s key role in the ORSA process should be to quantify the uncertainty surrounding the future financial results of the firm. By providing relevant standardized reports that clarify the uncertainty in terms easily understood by all stakeholders, the actuary will provide an essential element in the ORSA process. The dictum, "You can't manage what you can't measure." demonstrates the need to quantify risk, not just describe it qualitatively. While the ability to provide firm estimates of aggregate risk for complex organizations may not exist currently, doing so should be a target for the profession. The end result will be to enhance the financial security of the insurance industry at a time when all financial institutions are facing stakeholders skeptical about their financial condition. Part of the essay collection "Risk Metrics for Decision Making and ORSA"

Description: Discusses the necessity and the difficulty to take management actions into account in ORSA (Own Risk and Solvency Assessment). If management actions were ignored, multi-period scenarios could be too artificial. On the other hand, it is of course very hard to predict management actions. We propose a certain number of characteristics that the ORSA should feature. Part of the essay collection "Risk Metrics for Decision Making and ORSA"

Description: The essay briefly discussed the impacts from implementing ORSA to the main stakeholders in the insurance industry. Those stakeholders include: insurers, regulators, policyholders, investors, rating agencies, insurance industry employees and general public. Part of the essay collection "Risk Metrics for Decision Making and ORSA"

Description: The Society of Actuaries Research Institute’s Aging and Retirement Strategic Research Program is pleased to release a collection of essays addressing the impact of inflation on retirement and retirement-related issues.

Description: With the possible exception of full faith and credit debts of the United States, every loan carries some risk with it regardless of the borrower, and this risk varies depending on the creditworthiness of the person or institution that is supposed to repay the debt. Bearing that risk requires some sort of capital, both as a legal requirement and as evidence of good sense in lending, but recently we seem to have forgotten the basic relationship between a loan and the capital associated with it. The lesson of the current debacle is, or certainly ought to be, that the risk inherent in a financial transaction cannot be made to go away by the mere act of repackaging that transaction and renaming it.

Description: These essays encourage actuaries to share how they incorporate financial risks of environmental sustainability into their work for employers or clients.

Description: The SOA Committee on Living to 100 Research Symposia is pleased to present the following essays on recent old age mortality, mortality improvement trends and social issues on aging populations.

Description: The Society of Actuaries’ Aging and Retirement Strategic Research Program in collaboration with the International Association of Black Actuaries (IABA) and the Organization of Latino Actuaries (OLA) is pleased to release a collection of essays in response to a call for essays aimed to explore how differences in wealth and retirement outcomes are experienced by people of different races and ethnicities and to promote a better understanding of the underlying issues surrounding the differences.

Description: This report provides estimated savings for several of the options that are available to plan sponsors after implementation of the Medicare prescription drug program.

Description: This paper reviews the process performed in the actuarial department at one company as an illustration of the process of complying with Sarbanes-Oxley. It also discusses costs and benefits.