Description: Discusses methods to efficiently run stochastic models in light of AG 43.

Description: The use of Other Comprehensive Income OCI is receiving its moment in the sun. It is being considered for housing some of the earnings volatility in the International Accounting Standards Board IASB current approach to measuring insurance contracts’ performance.

Description: Discussion of formulas for determining substandard extra cost of insurance charges for universal life or variable universal life policies.

Description: The most popular term product, guaranteed level premium term typically, with level premiums for 10, 20 or 30-years has basic reserves under 1980 CSO that are significantly larger than needed. The 2001 CSO may provide substantial relief from these excess reserves. This article discusses how much impact on profits this relief may provide.

Description: Tillinghast conducted a survey of mortality tables that life insurance companies used for pricing life products in 2001. One objective was to determine the underlying table being used, and the prospects of the 2001 CSO-related tables becoming a new basis for mortality measurement. This article summarizes some of the results.

Description: This article examines the impact of a changing smoking rate on population-level mortality improvement and the importance of taking this driver into account.

Description: Announcement of this event, to be held May 6-9, 2012. The theme is 'The Actuarial Profession and Social and Economic Development'.

Description: New Zealand is about to launch its first variable annuity with guaranteed lifetime withdrawal benefits. The product design is mindful of the lessons from the financial crisis in the United States, Europe and Japan.

Description: Today, a plethora of tools and approaches exist to develop lifetime projections of long-term care (LTC) business. Within these tools lie two distinct approaches to project mortality; namely, by using assumptions that are applied: (1) to an all-lives exposure base, or (2) separately for disabled- versus active-lives exposure bases. Using disabled versus active mortality allows for more granular modeling of the two different cohorts that exhibit dramatically different mortality. And so, when using an all-lives mortality assumption, is the projection missing important details about the appropriate mortality level? This article seeks to not only answer this question, but also answer how a “traditional” all-lives mortality assumption can be impacted when you introduce a combination of the two modeling techniques into the development of a mortality assumption. To answer these questions, we examined the experience and results developed from one c ompany as an illustrative case study.

Description: The author presents the perspective that employers use of PBGC guarantees may cost taxpayers in the long run and suggests that Congress should address this issue.