Description: This essay collection examines how changing family dynamics shape retirement security, offering insights on demographic trends, policy design, and actuarial strategy—because retirement is the ultimate family affair.

Description: This suite of projects analyze four decades of U.S. mortality disparities across socioeconomic groups, providing data-driven insights using life tables and demographic techniques.

Description: This report covers the latest emerging trends in U.S. population mortality. The SOA relied upon data furnished by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Observations are based on the CDC’s recent release of 2021 mortality experience, along with prior mortality experience data from 1999 through 2020.

Description: LIMRA, Reinsurance Group of America (RGA), the Society of Actuaries (SOA) Research Institute, and TAI have collaborated on an ongoing effort to analyze the impact of COVID-19 on the individual life insurance industry’s mortality experience and share the emerging results with the insurance industry and the public. This report documents a high-level analysis of the claims that have been reported.

Description: On January 12, 2023, the Arizona Blockchain Applied Research Center (AZ BARC) and the SOA Research Institute jointly ran a workshop on the use of blockchain technology in insurance and financial industries. The workshop included presentations focused on academic research in the blockchain space by Arizona State University, AZ BARC and an industry expert panel assembled by the SOA Research Institute. This document summarizes the research highlights and the discussions that occurred during the two-hour workshop.

Description: In the fourth quarter of 2022, publicly traded life insurers reported on their financial and operational activities, which included a downturn in income from alternative investments, the continuing impact of COVID, the impact of equity market returns on variable annuity products, and growth trends related to pension risk transfer transactions.

Description: The Mortality Improvement Life Working Group released a recommendation for a set of improvement factors that vary by gender and attained age to be used in conjunction with the 2008 Valuation Basic table or the 2015 Valuation Basic table for AG-38 purposes.

Description: This is the third report in a series on the current state and future opportunity of the retirement market in China. In this report, edition three of the series, you will learn about the increased longevity in China. Almost one third of those surveyed anticipate living to age 90 or older. As a result, China has a significant need for retirement planning. Educating consumers on their retirement options is key and it was found that 88% of those surveyed have engaged in at least one type of retirement planning activity.

Description: The objective of this paper is to provide a practical guide with concrete case studies to help actuaries implement artificial intelligence and machine learning (AIML) to help accelerate the speed of analysis for life and annuity actuarial modeling. We do so by researching the existing literature regarding AIML and its applicability to stochastic modeling and exploring case studies.

Description: The SOA Research Institute along with the International Section, and the Social Insurance and Public Finance Section are pleased to make available a research report that compares international and domestic mandated paid family and medical leave programs. Special thanks to both Sections for their sponsorship of this effort.