Description: Businesses across the board have been drastically impacted by the effects of COVID-19 over the course of 2020, and insurance was not immune. Perhaps most relevant to this industry’s current capital and liquidity concern is the prevailing low interest rate environment. This has been a global trend in the last decade, and treasury rates in much of the developed world are at or near zero. Reduced investment returns limit an insurer’s ability to achieve their desired return on equity, eliminating previously profitable strategies that depended on the leverage of life and annuity balance sheets. Focus and activity have instead shifted to other methods to counteract the low interest rate markets and accompanying capital strain. Examples include increased mergers and acquisitions (M&A) activity within the insurance industry and an increasing focus by private equity firms in the insurance market for asset-intensive products, both of which reflect the goal of increasing yield rates on capital.

Description: The article investigates the reasons behind non-zero financial implications for fully reinsured businesses within the regulatory frameworks of US GAAP Long Duration Targeted Improvements (LDTI) and International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) 17. It helps companies grasp the nuances of these standards, thereby enhancing their risk management strategies, improving regulatory compliance and optimizing their decision-making processes.

Description: Adjusted earnings has long been a fundamental KPI for investors to assess the core financial performance of a company. As a non-GAAP measure, there is a divergence in practice of how individual companies define adjusted earnings and what activities management views as “core” to their business. The arrival of US GAAP LDTI has led insurers to revisit their existing adjusted earnings framework as the new standard introduces additional “accounting noise” that if left unadjusted obscures the true underlying drivers of performance. This article provides key insights on the influence US GAAP LDTI has had to the adjusted earnings calculation, highlights changes from the pre-LDTI framework, and showcases key themes observed from public insurers 2023Q1 10-Q filings.

Description: As an addendum to a July 2022 article, this article restates the formulas then presented for a framework to measure the reinsured portion of a direct loss from capping a net premium ratio or flooring a liability. The article corrects a flaw in one of the original formulas and shows, by example, how the framework can be applied to a specific application of reinsurance accounting.

Description: Latest development in IFRS 17 including a first look at companies disclosures and financial impacts, as well as a discussion of some of the run time issues that companies face.

Description: This article provides an EV overview, current industry usage, key considerations illustrated by MetLife’s strategic spin-off of Brighthouse Financial, as well as implementation notes.

Description: In the United States, there has been much industry discussion of the challenges associated with a sustained low interest rate environment, which impacts both the asset and liability sides of the balance sheet in unfavorable ways. The intent of this article is not to focus on these strategic issues. Rather, we attempt to shine a spotlight on some of the modeling challenges that practicing actuaries may experience when incorporating negative interest rates into their models.

Description: Provides an update, as of September 2022, on Financial Reporting Section sponsored research projects in process and those recently completed.

Description: Update on IFRS 17 including news, how IFRS 17 is impacting companies financials, comparisons to LDTI, and KPIs.

Description: This article starts with the increasing attention that FP&A receives due to the implementation of new financial regimes and emphasizes the collaborative nature of FP&A. It then describes the roles that actuaries play in FP&A, the new demands for actuaries that we are observing, and suggests some best practices that we are seeing across the clients. This article targets to point out the new demands from FP&A on actuaries and provide some advice on how actuaries can do to meet these demands.