Description: This report utilizes a literature review, company survey, company interviews and/or other methods to catalog a listing of common living benefit riders. It was sponsored by the Product Development and Reinsurance Sections along with the Committee on Life Insurance Research. This paper has several goals in relation to each living benefit rider type: to define various living benefit riders, to provide historical sales data and general filing requirements, to explore how underwriting and administration is handled, and to comment briefly on the overall level of claims activity experienced thus far compared to pricing expectations. In addition, it includes a review of the direct and reinsurance pricing implications of the riders to the extent they impact policyholder optionality and base plan financial characteristics. This paper includes perspectives developed through the experience of the authors, and includes executive summaries of a survey conducted by the SOA and Milliman of 34 direct writers, and interviews that Milliman conducted with 8 reinsurers.

Description: The authors of this report have identified three key corporate finance metrics and measures impacted by corporate pension plans that are increasingly being used by corporate decision-makers. The first is corporate leverage. The second is accounting adjustments made by rating agencies to income statements and cash flow statements. The third is the weighted average cost of capital (WACC) where it is felt that the calculation of the WACC from market data may be biased if corporate pension plans are ignored.

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

Description: This research report studies the social media response to three extreme tornado outbreaks: May 22, 2011 in Joplin, MO, November 17, 2013 in Washington, IL and April 9, 2015 in Rochelle, IL. It uses Twitter data with a 14‐day period for each tornado event with a focus on a 24‐hour period surrounding the event. It starts with an overview of the data followed by analysis of geolocation, insurance related user influence, social network, and sentiment.

Description: In this paper, the authors value three embedded guarantees in cash balance plans using option pricing fair valuation principles. Two of the guarantees are valued using a closed form adaptation of the Black-Scholes formula. The third guarantee is valued via a Monte-Carlo stochastic simulation of the risk- neutral interest rates process using a Hull-White interest rate model.

Description: This report explores estimation of employee stock options exercise behavior and option cost to firms.

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.

Description: This paper examines the following three questions by reviewing literature that identifies and evaluates the tradeoffs among annuitization and self-managed drawdown strategies: 1. How DO Retirees Draw Down their Financial Savings? 2. How COULD Retirees Draw Down their Financial Savings? 3. How SHOULD Retirees Draw Down their Financial Savings?

Description: At the outset, this paper discusses the current rules governing benefit distributions from defined contribution plans in the United States and other countries. Next, this paper explains the various types of financial products that can be used to provide defined contribution plan participants with lifetime retirement income. Finally, this paper considers how distribution rules and regulations can be used to encourage retirees to take their defined contribution plan distributions in the form of annuities or other lifetime income products.