Description: The speakers will discuss the replication of long-term options, including a discussion of issues such as liquidity, transaction costs, slippage, impact of policyholder behavior, and machine learning algorithms to improve hedge effectiveness.

Description: Representing a large indexed annuity writer, the speakers will discuss the growth and evolution of the market for index annuity products. Moreover, the challenges that growth has introduced and how those challenges are being met. While much of the market consists of simple, accumulation-oriented S&P 500 based strategies with 0% return floors, a significant portion of industry sales come from more complex products with highly customized index strategies and other features, such as living benefit guarantees. Attendees will gain a broad understanding of the indexed annuity market, product and features, operational difficulties in risk management arising from product design, and how actuarial and hedge professionals are managing these issues.

Description: Ignite-style presentations feature presenters who get 20 slides, which automatically advance every 15 seconds. The result is a fast and fun presentation which lasts just five minutes.The first portion of this session will feature public health experts doing Ignite-style presentations on various public health topics. Then stick around for the second portion when all of the presenters will take part in a moderated, talk-show-style discussion. You'll get a chance to ask your questions and dig deeper into the topics you just heard about. Be prepared for a fast-paced, thought-provoking session that you'll remember long after it ends!

Description: Offering supplemental benefits likes accident, hospital indemnity and critical illness to traditional worksite employees has become routine, but how do you handle gig workers? Traditionally these workers would be considered uninsurable, but can you afford to ignore them? The panel will discuss the unique factors of the gig economies and key thoughts for providing insurance in this space.

Description: This session will describe best practices for the preparation of the actuarial memorandum that supports the statement of actuarial opinion that is part of a health annual statement and review highlights of the new (2019) practice note on this topic. Presenters will represent different perspectives to discuss the components of an actuarial memorandum and use examples to present best practices and practical application of the information presented in the practice note.

Description: There has been a proliferation of proposals to expand access to public health insurance plans, either to strengthen insurance markets under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) or to replace the ACA marketplaces or other health insurance programs altogether. These proposals range from creating a public plan that would operate alongside private plans in the ACA marketplaces, to allowing individuals to buy into Medicare or Medicaid, to expanding Medicare to all. The terms used to describe these various options are often used interchangeably but they would be structured differently and have different impacts depending on the implementation details. Panelists at this session will discuss the general approaches for expanding access to public plans and their potential implications.

Description: In late 2018, the Society of Actuaries held a long-term care medical symposium. This meeting assembled a small group of medical experts to discuss the key medical issues facing the aging population with a focus on their impact on long-term care insurance. This session will provide an overview of the symposium, key outcomes and next steps for future updates.

Description: A panel of practicing actuaries and policy analysts will discuss the 'big issues' that could affect the actuarial profession in the future, and suggest ideas on how the actuarial profession could adapt to these challenges. This will be an interactive session where attendees can expect to have an opportunity to weigh in through polling questions and discussion. Topics touched will include: socialized medicine, artificial intelligence, the competition from data scientists, data commoditization, disruption from new entrants into the healthcare insurance space, and more.

Description: Health care is a complex market with a wide variety of stakeholders. These stakeholders have diverse business needs, requiring complicated data-driven decisions. The analytics and research supporting these decisions are often dependent on the availability of real-world data (RWD), which includes a wide variety of data capture technology and data reflecting treatment, clinical outcomes, and costs of health care in real treatment settings (e.g.,, outside of controlled clinical trials). The goal of this panel discussion is to explore how existing and emerging sources of RWD can enhance benefit design, improve risk assessment, influence treatment decisions, and advance the measurement of clinical, humanistic, and financial outcomes. The diverse speaker panel includes actuarial and non-actuarial perspectives, representing the pharmaceutical industry, a health-care services business, and academia. The panel will describe the decision-making that drives their individual needs to use RWD, identify current and developing RWD sources, provide examples of analyses using RWD, and discuss how emerging RWD may influence actuarial analytics and potentiate the development of new interdisciplinary methods and value drivers.

Description: Interest rates steadily declining ever since the Volcker Fed tackled inflation in the early eighties. Ten years of stimulating monetary policy brought new lows. We should have braced ourselves for a return to neutrality, but that concept remains elusive. We will explore structural issues that have brought rates to these low levels and the potential impacts on the insurance business.