Description: A look back over 20 years to see how product topics of the day have changed and remained the same.

Description: An introductory article describing how Bayesian statistics has evolved over the past 20 years and why it offers the actuarial discipline powerful tools to better understand and manage risk. Compared with traditional (frequentist) and black-box (machine learning) approaches, Bayesian analysis provides explainable models focused on distributions of estimates instad of simply point estimates.

Description: A significant fraction of insurance risk is characterized by the tail of the claims distribution, where we have much less data to model probabilities accurately. Ignoring the tails can lead to underpricing of tail risk and mispricing. Estimation of the tails can be complex due to a bias-variance tradeoff--the further out we go into the tail the more accurately we can model the extreme tail (lower bias) but the less data we have (increased variance). The statistical tools of Extreme Value Theory can be leveraged to more accurately estimate both the incidence and the severity of extreme events given that they occur. using the Generalized Pareto Distribution.

Description: Column highlighting education committee volunteers and the benefits of volunteering.

Description: This article details different methods for calculating mortality impact associated with new underwriting programs. A common simplified calculation is compared and contrasted with two first principles approaches. The strengths and weaknesses of both approaches are discussed.

Description: The article contains a description of the Emerging Topics Community. The focus of the article is what is a community, what makes the Emerging Topics Community special, and benefits of the Community. Included after the discussion on the community are ways to get involved and be a part of the community.

Description: "A crucial importance in forecasting is to be able to distinguish cases when temporary slowdowns in health care utilization are followed by a “rebound” period of higher utilization. Come explore an analysis of a new mathematical model describing the return-of-care process. By means of simulation and case studies using the R programming language, the relationship between the visibility of these effects and the endogenous variance of the utilization time series is explored. After attending this session, you will be able to: Describe the parameters and mathematical form of the model Apply the model to real-world utilization data"

Description: A non-technical review of two recent general insurance articles published in the SOA's North American Actuarial Journal. The articles reviewed analyze Pay-As-You-Drive Insurance and Usage-Based Insurance.

Description: A news release announcing details on the upcoming FSA evolution

Description: Actuarial Standards of Practice (ASOPs) are critical to an actuary's work, but staying abreast of changes to ASOPs could be challenging. Several ASOPs have been created or updated in the last few years while ValAct was on hiatus. Are you up to date? This session will focus on ASOPs 7, 11, 28, 41 and 57. Come ready to play, as we challenge your knowledge of these ASOPs in a fun game show format. By the end of this session, attendees will learn the major provisions included in ASOPs that have been recently updated or created and understand how their work may be impacted by these recent changes.