Description: Discussion of Session 5B.

Description: As people advance into their 80s, mental health becomes ever more important. Two nonsmoking octogenarians of identical age and gender, with the same body mass index, type of diet and physical exercise routine, may have markedly different prospects of living to 100. Cognitive and social functioning, and positive well-being, are key to living longer. Many activities that influence longevity are very cognitively demanding. For example, chronic illnesses require self-regulation to limit damage; better knowledge and reasoning help manage disease. This paper evaluates the cognitive, psychological and social drivers of longevity by reviewing recent longitudinal studies, and analyzing the latest research on brain plasticity, positive psychology and elderly cohort survival, as well as new geriatric psychological theories on successful aging. A quantitative assessment is then made of the actuarial implications of these drivers for modeling the mortality of elderly annuitants, with new insights into what factors keep people progressing purposefully into advanced age, beyond avoiding disease.

Description: Economic capital models are getting increasingly complex. An alternate copula free approach is presented which uses accounting data and an implicit correlation model to simplify economic capital calculations. Model simplification leads to robust and stable models. A banking case study is used to showcase how the model can be deployed using publicly available accounting data, capital adequacy, leverage ratios and shortfall tools.

Description: An insurance product’s return on required equity demonstrates how successfully its results are covering the company’s basic capital. Using some simplified assumptions, it is possible to calculate this return ratio and decompose it without a full projection of liabilities.

Description: An insurance product’s return on required equity demonstrates how successfully its results are covering the company’s basic capital. Using some simplified assumptions, it is possible to calculate this return ratio and decompose it without a full projection of liabilities.

Description: Recently researchers, practitioners, and regulators had intense debates about how to treat the data collection threshold in operational risk modeling. There are several approaches under consideration—the empirical approach, the “naive” approach, the shifted approach, and the truncated approach—for fitting the loss severity distribution. Since each approach is based on a different set of assumptions, different probability models emerge. Thus, model uncertainty arises. When possible we investigate such model uncertainty analytically, otherwise we use Monte Carlo simulations. For specific parametric examples we consider exponential and Lomax distributions which are special cases of the generalized Pareto family. Our primary goal is to quantify the effect of model uncertainty on risk measurements. This is accomplished by evaluating the probability of each approach producing conservative capital allocations based on the value-at-risk measure. These explorations are further illustrated using a real data set for legal losses in a business unit (Cruz, 2002).

Description: Stress tests and scenarios are often used as an informative tool to help stakeholders understand the risk profile of a firm. These analyses are often informational only and not directly linked to internal decision-making. This paper describes our approach to integrating stress tests into a regular decision-making process as part of our Own Risk and Solvency Assessment (ORSA). We have implemented a framework and analytical process that both enhances management’s understanding of our risk profile and links that to the development of our risk appetite. In this applied paper, we describe the framework and supporting analytics we established to achieve this goal and the practical implications for obtaining buy-in from senior management to establish this as an ongoing process.

Description: This is the informal discussion transcript for Concurrent Session 2A: Drivers of Future Mortality for the January 4-6, 2017 Living to 100 Symposium in Orlando.

Description: This is the informal discussion transcript from Session 3A: Mortality Inequality; Impact of Socioeconomic Factors from the 2017 Living to 100 Symposium.