Description: The Society of Actuaries Health Benefit Systems Practice Advancement Committee sponsored this review of recent academic literature on the US healthcare system covering quality, access, costs

Description: This study explores whether public pension plans have contributed enough to reduce unfunded liabilities, absent other influences such as investment returns.

Description: This project shows how to use agent-based models to simulate the behaviors of agents in complex health systems.

Description: The goal of the sessions was to learn how advisors are reaching out to this market and to uncover the roadblocks that they think are deterring greater mid-market use of financial services.

Description: Appendixes for the Evaluating ACO Efficiency: Risk Adjustment within Episodes study. The study aims to answer the question of how much of an episode’s cost and use of specific services can be attributed to the patient’s own health status, as opposed to being driven by other factors such as the care setting, patient preference, and provider practice patterns. In other words, do episode costs vary so widely because of patient characteristics, including health status, or are they related to other, nonclinical factors?

Description: The recent financial crisis created incentives to review investment practices and see what was done well and what could be improved for the future. Looking inward at insurer investment practices, background trend information was generated and a survey developed for insurers to share their thoughts. The research continued with conversations in private and public forums, where initial conclusions were expanded.

Description: This paper examines the Australian actuarial qualification process from the perspective of what makes a good education system, and notes that there are a number of constraints imposed by the profession that impair the quality of students’ learning outcomes. The paper goes on to suggest how these pitfalls might be avoided in the interests of providing future actuaries with an opportunity to develop the attributes they will need for their professional careers. From Actuarial Research Clearing House, 2006.

Description: India is in the process of updating to a more risk-based capital framework. The article provides a high level introduction of the development and discusses some of the key design and implementation considerations.

Description: This paper is intended to summarize the differences in theUP-94 and GAR-94 tables and to review issues that arise for actuaries in choosing the appropriate mortality table. From Transactions of Society of Actuaries 1995, Vol. 47.

Description: This survey of emerging risks attempts to track the risk manager population‘s thoughts about emerging risks across time. The top 4 emerging risks from this third iteration of the survey are: 1. US current account deficit/fall in US dollar. 2. Blow up in asset prices/excessive indebtedness. 3. Oil price shock/energy supply interruptions. 4. Chinese economic hard landing.