Description: New digital data known as alternative data is everywhere. Our industry has seen the financial, and hi-tech industries leverage new digital data to expand their key offerings and core services. From the lens of the global life and health industry, new digital data is still searching to be further understood. Risk assessment is a current focus area for using alternative data. A key question is even though risk assessment has always been data-driven, can it now move to the next level with the arrival of this alternative data. Can we use alternative data to make the risk assessment process quicker, cheaper, or faster thereby driving more sales and better conversion rates. It is an exciting time! With the increased adoption of health and well-being apps, data such as physical activity, nutrition, sleep, and mental wellness is now readily available. Expanded data such as digital biomarkers, IoT data, electronic health records and many more can also be accessed. However, how to effectively implement alternative data remains a challenge across the industry. We firmly believe it is, and will continue to be, imperative to take a structured approach to alternative data through a set of key considerations and a framework of principles.

Description: This article provides a summary of the revised ASOP 11 ("Treatment of Reinsurance or Similar Risk Transfer Programs Involving Life Insurance, Annuities, or Health Benefit Plans in Financial Reports") which was effective December 1, 2022.

Description: This article is the result of the Leadership & Development book club on Dare Lead. The article talks about major themes in the book and relates them to other podcasts and authors thought on those themes.

Description: Article presents the basic terminology and theory of attribution theory, the theory explaining the causes that people attribute their successes and failures to. The article reviews i) typical attributions(e.g. effort, luck), ii) dimensions of attribution (controllability, stability), iii) useful and non-useful attributions, and iv) attribution retraining and v) other aspects of the theory (such as accompanying emotions)

Description: Nobody is perfect, and actuaries are no exception. At some point, every actuary is bound to make a big mistake. These kinds of mistakes can have a significant impact on an actuary's reputation — whether that impact is positive or negative depends in large part on the way someone investigates, communicates, and resolves errors they uncover. By approaching mistakes with transparency and honesty, these big mistakes can actually enhance credibility and reputation, rather than harm it.

Description: The global nature of the reinsurance industry has enabled the diversification of risk away from concentration in specific regions to the larger global market. However, record catastrophe losses, inflation stemming from increased interest rates, geopolitical tensions and heightened climate risk are putting operating pressures on insurers and reinsurers. Article discusses the implications.

Description: The article summarizes the results of the 2024 Life Reinsurance Survey of Individual Life and Group Life business written in the traditional life reinsurance markets of the United States and Canada. The article summarizes the new business volume written in 2024 and 2023 as well as the volume of ceded reinsurance in force at year-end 2024 and 2023.

Description: This article gives examples of good and bad prompts for actuaries to use when using large language models.

Description: LEARN is an offering to regulators about reinsurance. This article summarizes a session held for Brazilian health regulators in the fall of 2022.

Description: The Best Article in the Reinsurance News 2023 and News from the Reinsurance Section Council