Description: An examination of the benefits and risks of working in the pension and insurance sectors in Nigeria.

Description: Statistics about funded status of multiemployer pension plan.

Description: Statistics about funded status of Producers-Writers Guild of America Pension Plan

Description: The valuation of illiquid assets is a vast topic, which is very much in a state of development. Based on comments made by investment professionals during the preparation of the proposal, this is a very challenging area of research. Generally, the investment industry will look with great interest on the outcome of this research. The research proposal was restricted in two ways. The literature review was focussed on the valuation of private placement debt PPD and real estate. The case study was limited to analyzing valuation methods with respect to PPD. Sponsored by CAS, CIA, SOA Joint Risk Management Section.

Description: Update on issues, priorities and key messages from the Joint CAS / CIA / SOA Risk Management Section Council.

Description: A followup on predictions about the future of enterprise risk management from 2003.

Description: This paper considers the problem of actuaries acting as advisers to individuals. This activity is covered by regulations, discussed in the paper, that currently recognize other professions but not actuaries. The paper recommends that actuarial organizations lobby the relevant legislative and regulatory bodies to provide actuaries pursuing an investment-focused career path with the same exemption status as other professionals.

Description: This paper defines health expectancy as that part of life expectancy where the person is expected to be healthy. It also breaks down the remainder of life expectancy into two unhealthy categories, one where assisted living will be necessary, and one where a skilled nursing facility will be necessary. These expectations are calculated for many combinations of age, other demographic characteristics, and current health issues.

Description: This paper examines some new Bayesian models for loss reserving inspired by a consideration of some of the methods and techniques appearing in the traditional chain ladder literature. This includes a possibly order restricted hierarchical Bayesian model for the year over year development factors. The issues of reserve variability and ranges of reasonable reserve estimates are considered. A new Bornhuetter-Ferguson styled Bayesian method of estimate revision is also discussed. These Bayesian models can be implemented using Markov chain Monte Carlo MCMC methods in a variety of programming languages, and can serve as starting points for more advanced models. This paper describes their implementation in WinBUGS a specialized software program for MCMC simulations. Illustrative WinBUGS code is included.