Description: "Issues surrounding end-of-life and palliative care are not well understood and there is little research in the actuarial literature. From an actuarial perspective, however, end-of-life is important because of the significant cost to the healthcare system. Ian Duncan will discuss some of his research on the financial implications of end-of-life care, as well as the outcomes of a palliative care program. Dr. Matzo is an engaging personality with decades of experience in gerontology and palliative nursing, including training and teaching professionals in the field. Dr. Matzo focuses on educating the public on the importance and benefits of palliative care and hospice (care given in the final six months of life). In this session on “Palliative Care Public Education,” Dr. Matzo will give us an overview of the benefits of palliative care and how this knowledge empowers the individual to make important decisions about their healthcare options. Attendees will have the opportunity to discuss the role that the actuarial profession may play in this area."

Description: "Weighted compositional data analysis for modeling and forecasting life-table death counts – Han Lin Shang, Ph.D., Professor of Business Analytics and Director of Research at the Department of Actuarial Studies and Business Analytics at Macquarie Business School, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia, Steven Haberman, PhD, Bayes Business School, City University of London, UK Compensation Effect of Mortality as a Challenge to Life Extension – Natalia S. Gavrilova, Ph.D., Leonid A. Gavrilov, Ph.D. Academic Research Centers, NORC at the University of Chicago"

Description: This session will delve into the results of a recent industry study exploring dynamic lapse behavior over the past five years in U.S. insurance products with general account credited rate-type features.

Description: Insurers are now in a better position than ever to both understand and enhance their customers' health and well-being. A key avenue for this is through developing health and wellness offerings for clients—for mutual benefit. Around the world, the proliferation of lifestyle and health data continues to gather pace.

Description: Are Accelerated Underwriting (AU) programs performing as expected? As mortality experience will (hopefully) be slow to emerge, it is pivotal that we look at alternative methods of monitoring early performance. From random hold outs, to post-issue APS's, and post-issue prescription profiles, explore popular monitoring techniques and lessons learned so far. Focus on confusion matrices that provide an early indication of mortality slippage relative to fluid-based underwriting decisions. Finally, explore statistical methods to determine what constitutes credibility and identify opportunities to think about mortality slippage more robustly.

Description: Learn more about the predictive modeling that was applied to industry data for the lapse and mortality experience in the post-level term period. Novel approaches were taken to model the shock lapse, subsequent lapse, and mortality experience. Observe a demonstration of the Tableau tool, which was built to allow users to analyze data on their own.

Description: Mortality is a fundamental element in the financial projections of the finances of social security programs around the world. Prominent actuaries from the U.S. Social Security Administration, Canada's Office of Superintendent of Financial Institutions and the U.K. Government Actuary's Department will discuss some of the key factors and current issues associated with these projections. Improving mortality has and will have a significant effect on the affordability and importance of income through retirement to many population segments in these countries.

Description: General Session

Description: Modifiable risk factors stand out today as significant contributors to diseases, and yet we as an industry haven't tackled this. Instead, we sit by almost passively as obesity, diabetes and hypertension rates continue to skyrocket. In fact, obesity and overweight is now over 70% of the US population and has turned into the forgotten pandemic. Globally, no country in the world has improved their obesity percentage rates during the past 15 years. Insurers are starting to explore health interventions which have the potential to reduce claims and change people's behavior.

Description: Some seniors may find it challenging to manage frequent doctor visits. Telemedicine can significantly fill in some of these gaps by enabling “virtual” doctor visits. Telemedicine improves access to medical care, reduces the need for transportation, reduces wait times, protects the health of individuals who won’t be exposed to germs of others in a waiting room, and improves access to care from a healthcare professional who may be far away from the patient and more. Implications for telemedicine in charged amounts (in various insurances) are being worked out and continue to evolve.