Description: In this presentation, we will delve into the realm of structured finance, placing a spotlight on advanced structured finance modeling. This session will first explore the growth of structured assets in the insurance space, and the reasons behind this growth. We will then conduct a deep dive into different credit models underlying the cashflow projections of different types of structured securities, including an overview of approaches for modeling the prepayment rates, default rates, and loss severity. We will also explore how a refined credit model can help insurance companies evaluate the risk-return tradeoff of investing in different structured assets. This session aims to enhance understanding of structured finance products and how to model them.

Description: This 60-minute panel discussion led by Academy volunteers will explore the treatment of reinsurance under the Valuation Manual's principles-based reserving (PBR) requirements for life insurance (VM-20). Panelists will discuss different reinsurance agreements, such as coinsurance, modified coinsurance, guaranteed and non-guaranteed yearly renewable term (YRT), stop-loss reinsurance, and financial reinsurance. The session aims to address practical reinsurance considerations for PBR in 2025, focusing on emerging issues such as reinsurance reserve credit and approaches for YRT reinsurance, and considering relevant ASOPs and updates to Practice Notes. Participants will gain insight into how different reinsurance structures affect VM-20 reserving.

Description: This session will explore recent and historical advancements in computing relevant to actuarial analysis. We will provide a comprehensive overview of the current landscape, tracing the journey of how we arrived here and how actuaries are already harnessing these innovations. This session will primarily be focused on hardware and as software programming interfaces the latter, in effect, helps accelerate code and ease of access to specialized hardware. We will also examine optimization opportunities involving the intersection of the two.

Description: This session will take a deep dive into emerging mortality experience for long-term care policyholders over age 90. How do we sort fact from fiction when it comes to recent experience that is blurred by the pandemic? This session will look at actual experience of healthy and disabled policies before, during and after the pandemic to help actuaries set assumptions.

Description: As sales registered index-linked annuity (RILA) sales continue to exhibit strong growth, insurers may be faced with challenges and opportunities to best manage the hedging requirements of the product. In this session we will explore the potential benefits of dynamically vs. static hedging and how insurers could recognize synergies in hedging RILA alongside traditional variable annuities. We will also dive into how hedging overlaps with strategy and modeling as companies need to simulate future index crediting strategies and monitor the risks of emerging guaranteed lifetime withdrawal benefit (GLWB) riders. Coming out of this session, attendees will gain key insights on hedging strategies and considerations for RILA products, with considerations around interaction with existing VA business, as well as the potential challenges of RILA hedging in an evolving market.

Description: The article explores a closed-form forecasting method that combines Exponentially Weighted Moving Average (EWMA), weighted linear regression, and ridge regression (L2 regularization). The approach addresses two key challenges in time-series forecasting: adapting to nonstationarity and mitigating overfitting due to multicollinearity. EWMA assigns more weight to recent observations, while ridge regression penalizes large coefficients to stabilize estimates. A cross-validation strategy across rolling time windows selects optimal hyperparameters: the EWMA decay factor (α) and the ridge penalty (λ). The method is tested using repeated regressions of stock returns, showing that most hyperparameter combinations outperform ordinary least squares (OLS) under the (λ=1, α=0) setting.

Description: Article about why the actuarial profession is a promising career in India.

Description: Article about emerging risks in India for India SOA newsletter

Description: Fairness in life insurance isn’t a checkbox—it’s a set of choices, trade-offs, and consequences. In this webcast, the report’s author will walk through a practical framework for defining and measuring fairness in life insurance workflows, showing why “fair” can mean very different things depending on whether you’re focusing on individuals or groups—and why you often can’t optimize both at once. You’ll get a clear tour of the major fairness criteria used in today’s literature—what they measure, where they fit in insurance, and what can break when you adopt them . Expect straight talk, concrete insurance-oriented examples, and guidance on selecting metrics that align with business objectives, regulatory expectations, and stakeholder priorities—without pretending there’s a one-size-fits-all answer.

Description: This episode of the Society of Actuaries’ podcast features Senior Vice President and Principal at Lewis & Ellis Dave Dillon; entrepreneur and founder of Cost Plus Drugs, Mark Cuban; and Jon Forster, SOA Director of Professional Development Learning and Content Design. Together, they explore entrepreneurship, artificial intelligence, and the evolving healthcare landscape. The conversation includes what it takes to be successful in business, the current healthcare landscape, and the state of AI in actuarial work. Mark shares the origin and mission behind Cost Plus Drugs, underscoring the critical role of price transparency and trust in improving healthcare access and affordability.