Description: Medical insurance today is more like pre-paid medical payments. Medical insurance should be bought for protection, but rarely used, like auto insurance.

Description: This article gives examples of how an actuary can live by the actuarial motto of substituting facts for appearances. The specific examples given are setting the mortality for table shaved individual life business and setting late duration lapse assumptions for level term business.

Description: Significant consolidation has occurred in the U.S. reinsurance market over the last five years. The number of companies operating in ordinary life reinsurance has continued to decline—13 primary companies excluding retrocessionaires contributing to the Munich American Reassurance Survey in 2004, compared to 20 companies in 1999. Table 1 and Table 2 indicate the change in market share as well as the change in the composition of the leading participants in the U.S. market for 2004 versus 1999.

Description: The rapid pace of change within the reinsurance sector over the past few years has given way to the permutations of a “new reality” that is being shaped by abundant capacity from traditional and alternative sources.