Description: Open source programming languages have become a common part of the actuarial toolkit over the years. Using tools like R and Python, highly technical actuaries can automate onerous processes, easily work with massive amounts of data, create models and generate reports. Although these tools excel at turbo-charging analysts, it can be difficult for benefits to inure to the rest of the organization given the learning curve (“Can’t you just put this in Excel?”), control risks (“So your entire process could break overnight if some random person in Nebraska changes something?”), and internal IT environments. Listen in on a panel discussion where presenters share their personal stories of working with open source in a production setting. Hear about real world business problems, how open source tools were used, what risks were present, how they were overcome and the final business result.

Description: Stay current with the latest mortality trends and practices in this wide-ranging session, covering research performed by the SOA and their collaborators, including recent research from the SOA's Individual Life Experience Committee. Topics will include mortality improvement, mortality by socioeconomic category, cause of death analysis, and insurance company life experience quintile analysis.

Description: Are Accelerated Underwriting (AU) programs performing as expected? As mortality experience will (hopefully) be slow to emerge, it is pivotal that we look at alternative methods of monitoring early performance. From random hold outs, to post-issue APS's, and post-issue prescription profiles, explore popular monitoring techniques and lessons learned so far. Focus on confusion matrices that provide an early indication of mortality slippage relative to fluid-based underwriting decisions. Finally, explore statistical methods to determine what constitutes credibility and identify opportunities to think about mortality slippage more robustly.

Description: Join us as we delve into the dynamic landscape of the Fixed Indexed Annuity industry. Presenters will discuss trends observed in recent FIA experience, observations from their own company's data, and findings from Milliman's FIA industry experience studies. Key results include a view of surrender behavior relative to market dynamics and comparisons with industry predictive models, serving as a benchmark to explore where industry experience aligns with expectations and where potential surprises have emerged. Through a combination of data-driven analysis and expert interpretation, attendees will gain valuable perspectives on the evolving FIA landscape, enabling them to make informed decisions to navigate future challenges.

Description: This session will delve into the results of a recent industry study exploring dynamic lapse behavior over the past five years in U.S. insurance products with general account credited rate-type features.

Description: "Modern actuarial work, being highly data-intensive, offers many opportunities for actuaries to apply the statistical skills gained through their basic training. Advances in computing allow us to analyze vast quantities of data efficiently, and many software packages provide statistical 'answers' to almost any question an actuary might ask. However, in this field, it is often worth taking a step back, and ensuring that we recall and consider the warnings that come with each of the statistical procedures we might attempt to use. This will allow us to ensure that we guard ourselves against drawing inappropriate conclusions, which could come back to haunt us later. At the conclusion of the session, attendees will be able to avoid drawing inappropriate statistical conclusions while doing their work. They will leave informed about the types of pitfalls that exist and where those might come into play in actuarial work."

Description: "The Individual Life Experience Committee continues to unlock valuable insights from the VM51 data as the NAIC releases it. In this session, attendees will get a preview of individual life mortality patterns during COVID-19 for more than 100 companies in the NAIC data for the years 2020 to 2021, the first years of the pandemic. The session will also share early findings from the committee's latest initiatives, including the integration of predictive analytics into reporting products, assessment of simplified and accelerated underwriting, exploration of joint life mortality, evaluation of company-level differences, and continued research into old-age mortality patterns. Attendees will leave the session with enhanced knowledge for assessing best-estimate mortality for valuation purposes."

Description: Session 10A: In Lieu of Services - Addressing Health-Related Social Needs in Medicaid

Description: Session 8F: Closing the Analytical Gap

Description: Session 6H: Analyzing Healthcare Costs by Disease - Commercial versus Medicare Trends