Description: Outlines a collective structure that can be used to convert a lump sum payout into a lifetime income stream, with a 2% COLA that is contingent on funded status and with a smoothed pricing for the annuity conversion factor.

Description: This article Provides a description of an IRS Directive that provides a safe harbor tax reporting position for computing tax reserves for pre-2018 tax years for annuity contracts subject to AG43 and VM-21 and life insurance contracts subject to VM-20 Principal Based Reserves methods. The safe harbor is required to be implemented on the 2017 tax return, with certain spread amounts in some cases to future tax years starting in 2018.

Description: This article briefly summarizes the history of the Passive Foreign Investment Company (PFIC) tax regime. Then it provides a detailed description of the PFIC proposed regulations issued in July of 2019.

Description: The collective investment in transforming the life insurance proposition exceeds anything seen in the last thirty years — a working lifetime. As one would expect, reinsurers are playing a major role. The past five years have seen global reinsurers raise the bar on client experience to new levels, while also investing, expanding and re-organizing to support the transformation of the primary insurance industry, and in so doing also their own.

Description: Read the Quo Vadis Reinsurance.

Description: Describes the challenges of using replacement ratios for retirement planning and suggests alternative approaches including spending strategies such as the 4% rule or divide your age by 20 (Feel Free spending) rule. Identifies and prioritizes different types of spending needs including sustenance, lifestyle, health care and bequest. In addition the article provides data showing how spending typically drops as retirees age and discusses how to take this into account when planning when to retire or how much to spend in retirement.

Description: Staff Fellow introductory column with discussion of the role of actuaries for defined contribution plans and recently released research on generational differences in retirement planning and savings.

Description: This article discusses the impact of rising interest rates on annuity writers and life insurers and the risk management challenges it presents. Falling interest rates were addressed as well.

Description: This article defines operational risk, gives some real-life examples of improperly managed operational risks and the consequences thereof, and provides advice on steps necessary to mitigate operational risk.

Description: In this article the author discusses the many hats an actuary wears and how risk management comes to play in each one. The roles discussed: 1. Pricing actuary. 2. Catastrophe modeling actuary. 3. Ceding reinsurance actuary. 4. Corporate actuary. 5. Loss reserving actuary. 6. Predictive modeling actuary. 7. Marketing actuary. 8. Underwriting actuary. 9. Investment actuary.