Description: The Joint CAS-CIA-SOA Risk Management Section commissioned this report to explore the practices that would enable a company to optimize the integration of risk, capital, and financial management. Based on our research, several effective practices have emerged relative to implementation of a linked environment. These include: 1) Development of a corporate oversight committee, representing senior management commitment to implementation. 2) Development of a framework, specifying how the goal of linkage will be accomplished. 3) Risk identification and assessment, clearly key to the understanding of the organization’s risk profile. 4) Actual linkage of risk, capital and financial management through the use of economic capital modeling and performance measurement on a risk-adjusted basis. 5) Education and communication throughout the organization.

Description: Analysis of possible mathematical relationships between hospital quality and hospital billed or allowed charges or other measures, using quality data as defined by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services along with the Hospital Quality Alliance for their Hospital Quality Initiative.

Description: “Non-traditional” guarantees refer to guarantees that are in addition to traditional mortality, expense, and interest guarantees. Examples of such types of guarantees are death and living benefits on variable annuity contracts and no-lapse guarantees on universal life or variable universal life products. The purpose of this paper is to offer practitioners an overview of the various issues concerning the pricing of these guarantees, the many other issues which need to be analyzed and addressed in the determination of risks and the management of the block of business, and the results of a company survey of practices. This paper is based on the working knowledge of the authors, a broad compilation of literature and the company survey results. At the end of most sections of the paper, we have provided a list of resources which we have selected as some of the best sources available for those practitioners interested in researching the subject matter further.

Description: The recent financial crisis created incentives to review investment practices and see what was done well and what could be improved for the future. Looking inward at insurer investment practices, background trend information was generated and a survey developed for insurers to share their thoughts. The research continued with conversations in private and public forums, where initial conclusions were expanded.

Description: This research report is sponsored by The Society of Actuaries and the Canadian Institute of Actuaries on the Canadian health care system. Performed by Stéphane Levert, FSA, FCIA, the study (available in French and English) estimated the future costs of the Canadian health care system, assessed the sustainability of the system over a 25-year horizon, and analyzed the implications of the changes to the Canada Health Transfer proposed on Dec. 19, 2011 by the federal government. The report summarizing the findings indicates that, without significant government intervention, the Canadian health care system in its current form is not sustainable.

Description: This overview shows considerations for consumers when reviewing the Life and Annuity Living Benefit Riders study.

Description: This report studies the various benchmarks for analyzing the option-adjusted spreads of the major fixed income asset classes of life insurance companies. In addition, this report analyzes the historical benchmark performance against default rates for the asset class being benchmarked.

Description: Authored by a MIB Solutions team of Tom Rhodes, Stuart Klugman, Marianne Purushotham and Stacy Gill, the report summarizes the results of a study on the application and adoption of credibility theory within the life insurance and annuity industry. In addition to the report, numerical examples related to the application of credibility to company mortality and lapse data are provided in the four Excel files. This excel spreadsheet is a numerical example relating to the application of Credibility for mortality - Limited Fluctuation Method. Please see the SOA website research section for the full report on Credibity Theory Practices.

Description: This paper was the results of an invitation by the SOA’s Pension Section Research Team to explore the current state of defined benefit plans in Canada and future visions of them.