Description: This report proposes a methodology to isolate crop yield improvement due to technological change and favorable and unfavorable weather.

Description: To expand our understanding of the theory of behavioral economics and its application to life and health insurance policyholder and annuitant behavior, the Society of Actuaries' Committee on Knowledge Extension Research, Committee on Life Insurance Research and the Financial Reporting Section issued a call for papers, inviting actuaries, academics, economists, psychologists, sociologists, researchers and other professionals to explore this topic from a variety of perspectives.

Description: This is the report of a research project sponsored by the Society of Actuaries Committee on Post Retirement Needs and Risks, LIMRA, and the International Foundation for Retirement Education. The report shows the findings of a survey posed to approximately 1,500 retirees with $100,000 or more of investable financial assets. The survey questions explored how retirees make decisions about investing their assets and purchasing financial products. The report provides valuable information for actuaries and the financial services industry.

Description: Tree models have been found to provide a good fit to group long term disability recovery and mortality rates. This research paper provides an overview of tree models, and details how they have been used for developing these rates.

Description: The SOA Research Institute is pleased to make available material for Primer on Retirement Income Strategy Design and Evaluation, a primer that addresses strategies to generate income during retirement from the perspectives of their design and evaluation. Design involves specifying a joint investment and withdrawal strategy, which entails deciding how to invest available assets and setting a plan for withdrawing income. Evaluation involves analyzing how well the potential outcomes arising from a strategy satisfy objectives, which provides the foundation for strategy selection. The main focus of this Primer is investment strategy rather than withdrawal strategy. However, investment strategy cannot be examined independently from withdrawal strategy. Income generation is the focal point of a retirement income strategy, and this in turn depends on the rules under which income is drawn. In addition to the primer, the authors have created two Excel models for illustrative purposes.

Description: The rapid advancement of technology today will revolutionize how humans interact with their vehicles in the near future. Vehicle manufacturer initiatives to incorporate new technology into their products should usher in societal benefits such as improved driving safety, enhanced fuel efficiency and potentially lower costs for insurance.

Description: This report reviews the academic and grey literature on “cyber insurance” and “cyberactuary” across multiple disciplines.

Description: The Casualty Actuarial Society, Canadian Institute of Actuaries, and the Society of Actuaries' Joint Risk Management Section and the Joint Risk Management Research Committee are pleased to make available a new report on the application of ERM. Authored by Bonnie-Jeanne MacDonald, Sim Segal, Michael Wolfson and Heidi Walsh, the report provides a novel demonstration on how ERM can be applied to serve the Canadian public by informing decision makers on the risks facing the current and future delivery of long-term care.

Description: As part of an upcoming Society of Actuaries (SOA) research release to model health care costs in 2020 and 2021, a set of “Return Stages” were created in order to define the various level of activities being observed, as well as to contemplate the ways these stages may progress as various cities, counties and states release their own phasing processes for returning their jurisdictions to normal.

Description: There have been many examples of interest rate swap deals which have not produced the desired results for the end-user, largely due to unanticipated interest rate movements. While the authors of this paper strongly believe that derivatives, such as IR swaps, are powerful tools, which when used properly can effectively transfer risk and enhance the efficiency of markets, they also believe it is critically important to analyze the potential exposure to interest-rate risk. In this article, they provide the necessary background to measure this potential exposure.