Description: In November 2020 the Life Actuarial (A) Task Force unanimously passed APF 2020-08 which adds a third permissible method in the Valuation Manual to determine company experience mortality rates. This article describes the three methods

Description: Notes of the September 11. 2007 Education and Research Section Council Conference Call including discussion of the 2005 Halmstad Prize and the Expanding Horizons schedule.

Description: Small insurance companies sometimes feel constrained to use Excel instead of a commercial actuarial system due to cost and inertia. This article provides multiple reasons why that decision leads to unintended risks for the actuarial department and the company as a whole.

Description: The article discusses how strategic planning and strategic risk management are intertwined.

Description: Article discusses managing IT systems properly to avoid infrastructure problems by looking at alignment, user experience and technology.

Description: Our previous article, “Introduction of Cashflow Matching Strategic Asset Allocation (SAA) Framework,” introduced the concept and included a real-world case study that developed a liability-driven investment strategy for a single line of business (LOB) for a life insurer. This article expands the framework and the case study from a single LOB to simultaneously optimize asset allocation across multiple LOBs. It discusses how this multi-line SAA framework can enable an insurance company to efficiently tag its asset holdings to each LOB, identify opportunities in the public and private asset markets to enhance risk-adjusted returns, and develop a deeper understanding of the trade-off between the degree of cashflow matching and risk-adjusted returns across LOBs.

Description: Understanding the volatility associated with audit samples, as well as breaking out the different contributors to estimated mortality impact are vital tools in helping actuaries and underwriters make informed decisions about less invasive underwriting programs. This article walks through a sample example demonstrating how to calculate these metrics.

Description: A review of model inputs, suggested methods to getting comfortable with the data that your model is using, and data validation lessons

Description: This article highlights the fact that new requirements for disclosure of average liability duration and interest rates could lead to diversity in practice. It also recognizes that elements of the new disclosure requirements will enable financial statement users to perform their own crude estimates of these averages in ways that could help them to better understand the liabilities and to compare companies using consistent methods. Finally, the article describes how companies might also find value in such crude estimates.

Description: The article talks through my personal journey of passing actuarial exams during the pandemic. The purpose of the article is to provide readers a different perspective on how to successfully navigate and balance work-study commitments. The article provides 6 tips that helped me overcome exam challenges.