Description: Statutory and GAAP metrics are useful for external audiences such as regulators and investors since they provide a consistent framework for viewing and comparing multiple companies at a point in time. However, their uses are more limited for managers who require more real-time information in making strategic decisions. Many insurers are developing internal metrics such as Value of New Business (VNB) for better profitability insights at the point of sale, to understand how new business profitability changes over time and to allow for quicker decision making. By leveraging existing models and reporting processes, insurers can reduce the additional effort involved in applying VNB toward applications such as pricing, capital allocation and risk management. Find out more about key considerations for developing and using VNB.

Description: Mortality Improvement is fundamental to setting your mortality assumptions. Creating your own Mortality Improvement assumption may seem like a Herculean task. The truth is creating a mortality improvement assumption with tools provided by the SOA, or the Continuous Mortality Investigation (CMI) make the process easy. Leaving you with the Herculean task of deciding if the assumption you created fits your product. Expect to learn about the CMI tool and the SOA's Mortality Improvement Model (MIM) tool, how you might get data to use in those tools, and what assumptions you need to make outside of data like what will the MI be in 20 or 30 years? Whether it is the general population, a segment of the general population, or certain causes of death, you will get very different answers.

Description: The frequent use and complexity of today's actuarial projection models have increased the importance of efficient models. Model optimization can reduce both cloud costs and overall end-to-end clock times. This, in turn, enables companies to do more with less, such as reducing close times, increasing controls, enhancing analysis, doing more complicated calculations, and/or improving employee workloads during the close. From design and data to execution and audit, join us to explore techniques that can be applied throughout the actuarial modeling process to optimize actuarial models for improved run-time, accuracy, and reliability. We will focus on techniques that don't rely on model compression.

Description: Modifiable risk factors stand out today as significant contributors to diseases, and yet we as an industry haven't tackled this. Instead, we sit by almost passively as obesity, diabetes and hypertension rates continue to skyrocket. In fact, obesity and overweight is now over 70% of the US population and has turned into the forgotten pandemic. Globally, no country in the world has improved their obesity percentage rates during the past 15 years. Insurers are starting to explore health interventions which have the potential to reduce claims and change people's behavior.

Description: Life insurers have been allocating to alternative investments (private credits, real assets, private equities) in the past decades, searching for higher yields. Examine the macro trend in insurer's investment allocation, definitions of alternative investments, benefits of investing in them as well as consideration of regulatory complications involved. Come learn about alternative asset classes, best practice in ALM and regulatory trends in insurance asset management.

Description: What learnings and challenges did 2023 Long Duration Targeting Improvement (LDTI) adopters experience? What's ahead for 2025 adopters? And how do companies leverage LDTI to improve data and analytics and benefits operations? Join the session for a deep dive into what's next on the horizon.

Description: Hear highlights from recently published and upcoming Society of Actuary (SOA) Research Institute reports, Including work on specialty pharmacy and the long-term impacts of COVID-19. Join us as we focus on the financial impacts of these issues as well as trends and other actuarial considerations.

Description: The Society's vision is for actuaries to be recognized as the leading professionals in the modeling and management of financial risk and contingent events. To that end, this column will regularly update members on the latest initiatives underway aimed at helping us realize this vision.

Description: In memory of Harold Dershowitz.

Description: View the Archive Spring 2017: Design and Accounting Exam (Canada).