Description: "In this session, we will explore the latest trends in asset allocation, focusing on how these trends are shaping the investment landscape in 2025. With insights from industry experts and real-world examples, attendees will gain a comprehensive understanding of the factors driving asset allocation decisions and the implications for portfolio management. We will delve into the impact of economic policies, market volatility and emerging asset classes on asset allocation strategies. This session is designed for actuaries, investment professionals and anyone interested in staying ahead of the curve in the ever-evolving world of asset allocation. Learning outcomes: Understand the key trends in asset allocation for 2025, including the influence of economic policies and market dynamics. Identify emerging asset classes and their potential impact on portfolio diversification and risk management. Gain insights into the strategies used by leading investment professionals to navigate market volatility and optimize asset allocation. Learn how to apply these trends and strategies to enhance your own investment decision-making process."

Description: "This session is for liability-side actuaries seeking a summary of asset valuation principles. Topics to be discussed include: Why it's important in today's world to understand both sides of the balance sheet. Yield curves, including spot rates, forward rates, coupon rates and bootstrapping. Duration calculations, including an explanation of modified duration for contracts with embedded options and key rate durations. A summary of today's regulatory environment in the context of embedded options, including MRB, VM-21 and VM-22. Next, we will dive into duration profiles of different asset classes, including CLOs (floating rate), RMBS (negative convexity), traditional bonds and swaps. Lastly, we will discuss risk-neutral scenarios, martingale tests, and applications in hedging MRBs."

Description: Most people will now have had some exposure to Large Language Model tools such as ChatGPT and will have been impressed by their ability to write essays or generate computer code. However, fewer people will be aware of the next phase of AI, which will turn AI chat assistants into more fully fledged AI colleagues. These emerging set of tools come under the broad term of “AI agents”, which are AI-based systems which have capabilities beyond a simple chat interface and are able to interact with external tools, access data, and most importantly have the capability to plan and perform arbitrarily complex tasks. In this talk we will explore the emerging field of AI agents and discuss our experiences using such frameworks to build end-to-end actuarial modelling solutions and demo some POCs we have been working on for the audience. We will also cover topics related to building such complex AI systems including: prompt-engineering fine-tuning retrieval augmented generation function calling specific AI agent frameworks and how they will allow AI to participate in all the different stages of the actuarial modelling process from coding and testing to documentation and analysis.

Description: As sales registered index-linked annuity (RILA) sales continue to exhibit strong growth, insurers may be faced with challenges and opportunities to best manage the hedging requirements of the product. In this session we will explore the potential benefits of dynamically vs. static hedging and how insurers could recognize synergies in hedging RILA alongside traditional variable annuities. We will also dive into how hedging overlaps with strategy and modeling as companies need to simulate future index crediting strategies and monitor the risks of emerging guaranteed lifetime withdrawal benefit (GLWB) riders. Coming out of this session, attendees will gain key insights on hedging strategies and considerations for RILA products, with considerations around interaction with existing VA business, as well as the potential challenges of RILA hedging in an evolving market.

Description: "Focuses on innovations in financial reporting processes that connect actuarial results with finance in a clear, efficient way. The session covers tools and techniques for automating data flows from actuarial models to financial statements, reducing manual work at quarter-end. It also highlights the use of visualization and business intelligence (BI) tools to communicate valuation results (e.g., interactive dashboards for reserve roll-forwards or attribution analysis). By sharing success stories of automating FP&A workflows and adopting self-service analytics, presenters will show how actuaries can provide more timely insights to management. Attendees will take away ideas for improving reporting accuracy, audit trail, and the strategic value of actuarial information in decision-making."

Description: "Asset-intensive reinsurance has become a focal point of actuarial, administrative and regulatory consideration in recent years. This session will walk through a real-world reinsurance case study of an illustrative transaction - from the initial actuarial due diligence process of the cedant's subject business through onboarding and integrating that business into the reinsurer's platform. Topics will include actuarial due diligence, experience studies and assumption setting, model validation, model development and onboarding of the subject business. The session aims to provide a variety of insights into this process across different business units and functions. By the end of the session, attendees will have a firm understanding of key transaction-related topics within the context of a real-world example."

Description: In this presentation, we will delve into the realm of structured finance, placing a spotlight on advanced structured finance modeling. This session will first explore the growth of structured assets in the insurance space, and the reasons behind this growth. We will then conduct a deep dive into different credit models underlying the cashflow projections of different types of structured securities, including an overview of approaches for modeling the prepayment rates, default rates, and loss severity. We will also explore how a refined credit model can help insurance companies evaluate the risk-return tradeoff of investing in different structured assets. This session aims to enhance understanding of structured finance products and how to model them.

Description: This 60-minute panel discussion led by Academy volunteers will explore the treatment of reinsurance under the Valuation Manual's principles-based reserving (PBR) requirements for life insurance (VM-20). Panelists will discuss different reinsurance agreements, such as coinsurance, modified coinsurance, guaranteed and non-guaranteed yearly renewable term (YRT), stop-loss reinsurance, and financial reinsurance. The session aims to address practical reinsurance considerations for PBR in 2025, focusing on emerging issues such as reinsurance reserve credit and approaches for YRT reinsurance, and considering relevant ASOPs and updates to Practice Notes. Participants will gain insight into how different reinsurance structures affect VM-20 reserving.

Description: This session will explore recent and historical advancements in computing relevant to actuarial analysis. We will provide a comprehensive overview of the current landscape, tracing the journey of how we arrived here and how actuaries are already harnessing these innovations. This session will primarily be focused on hardware and as software programming interfaces the latter, in effect, helps accelerate code and ease of access to specialized hardware. We will also examine optimization opportunities involving the intersection of the two.