Description: The Society of Actuaries (SOA) is dedicated to advancing education and research for the actuarial profession. As part of its mission, the SOA recognizes the importance of partnering with colleges and universities to help develop future actuaries. With this in mind, the SOA’s Research Department is holding a Student Research Case Study Challenge, which provides an opportunity for teams of students to apply their actuarial skills on a real-world problem in a business setting.

Description: The COVID-19 pandemic helped accelerate many changes in the Health Care system that were already taking place. The major disruptions to the way providers operated was quite evident with shifting of focus away from elective services to create capacity for treating COVID-19. However, even before the pandemic, providers were adapting to changes in their environments.

Description: Irish actuary and professor explains his hypothesis that actuaries, as practitioners, are reluctant to adopt the theories of financial economists unless the models on which the theories are based fit the actual data the actuaries have.

Description: This article discusses Jed Frees’ book in progress, “Regression Modeling with Actuarial and Financial Applications” which offers a synthesized introduction to regression and time series.

Description: LTC insurers are beginning to implement population health programs to improve the lives of their policyholders before and during a claim. Measuring the financial impact of these programs can be difficult for a variety of reasons and multiple methodologies are used to evaluate treatments or programs. This article proposes two different methods of randomized control trials to evaluate the impact of these programs through a case study approach, along with additional potential considerations when evaluating effectiveness.

Description: This article discusses considerations for statistical biases that may arise in LTC blocks due to historical benefit reductions. The article explores these biases in the context of experience studies and experience projections.

Description: The summary and introduction of an SOA research paper that explores valuable insights and recommendations for insurance companies considering entering the market of commercial long-term care insurance (LTCI) in the Asia-Pacific, based on individual health status.

Description: The article provides an overview of the federal tax treatment of long-term care insurance contracts, including a brief history of the tax treatment of long-term care insurance, the requirements that must be satisfied in order to be treated as qualified long-term care insurance under the Internal Revenue Code, and a brief discussion of qualified long-term care combination products and chronic and terminal illness accelerated death benefits offered under life insurance contracts.

Description: How insurers can include a liquidity score and liquidity stress scenarios as part of their asset liability management (ALM) protocol.

Description: Duration matching is a risk management strategy, commonly used in the insurance industry, where the duration (price sensitivity to a yield curve movement) of an asset portfolio is adjusted to be made equal to the duration of the liability. However, this approach has flaws. In this essay, I note some key failures of duration matching and offer a potential alternative.