Description: Inflation can impact retirement and retirees in a variety of ways. With inflation as a reality in the current economic environment, the Society of Actuaries Research Institute's Aging and Retirement Strategic Research Program has explored this issue in recently published research and essays. This webcast will present results of that work, sharing different aspects of inflation's impact on retirement including savings, investment choices and the impact on retirees themselves.

Description: This webcast will explore hedge strategies that can take advantage of synergies with existing business, improve liquidity and collateral management, incorporate opportunistic design-making, and reflect a company’s appetite for certain risks where excess returns can be earned.

Description: Our panelists will explore fixed income topics from an actuarial perspective. We'll start with the basics of bonds, including sensitivity measures like duration and higher moments. Then, we'll discuss bond ALM characteristics, highlighting the advantages and disadvantages of incorporating various bonds into a portfolio. Finally, we'll cover actuarial modeling considerations, such as reinvestments, defaults, expenses, and other assumptions. We encourage the audience to ask questions throughout the presentation and we hope you can join us for an engaging discussion!

Description: In this talk, we look at two behavioral aspects: from end customers perspective and through the lens of underwriters. We will examine simple rules to improve the insurance underwriting decision to judge whether a risk is insurable and whether they have impact on increasing underwriting decision quality.

Description: Deciding where to spend that next dollar of capital is at the heart of financial management. Executive teams regularly grapple with decisions on whether to purchase a new Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system, invest in growing a distribution channel, expand into a new geographic area, or develop a new product, among many. The great news is there is no shortage of sound financial theory and logical rationale for making these transformational decisions. Yet business literature is filled with examples of decisions that did not meet expectations, sometimes materially missing the mark when comparing experience to assumptions. This is particularly the case with mergers and acquisitions, where multiple studies have shown that a sizable majority of such transactions do not achieve their intended outcomes. While some of the disappointing returns are attributable to random chance and unfortunate circumstances, a material number of them can be traced back to cognitive issues that arose during the decision-making process. Mental shortcuts or heuristics taken by individual decision-makers in evaluating information, as well as organizational dynamics such as groupthink both contribute to sub-optimal choices involving significant outlays of money. Being aware of these and having established protocols to mitigate against them can substantially improve decision-making around capital allocation and reduce misallocation of funds. In this session, the panelists discuss several common cognitive biases that can adversely impact the capital allocation decision process, introducing the notions of time, accounting convention, positivity, hierarchy, and social proof in describing them. Historical case examples of sub-optimal capital allocation are then explored, identifying the contributing behavioral factors including the simultaneous confluence of multiple factors. The panelists will close the session with several suggestions for attendees to consider for incorporation into their decision-making processes. At the conclusion of the session, attendees will be able to: - Learn common cognitive biases that impact capital allocation decisions - Differentiate which biases impact different aspects of the capital allocation process - Build awareness of biases affecting capital allocation decision models - Mitigate cognitive biases present in decision making processes

Description: In honor of Bob Barker's 100th birthday (December 12, 2023), we will examine the emerging development in the opaque world of health care prices. 'Referenced Based Pricing' has been a cost-cutting strategy applied by some self-insured employers, but administration, employee dissatisfaction with balance billing, and litigation have been barriers to growth. The new transparency data has yielded research indicating that 'cash prices' are lower than commercially negotiated rates in some areas. Dive in with industry experts as they discuss emerging trends of how consumers, employers, and health insurers will pay for health care services.

Description: Hear a presentation of the American Academy of Actuaries Climate Change Joint Committee's paper, "Financial Inequities Caused by Climate-related Disasters". Climate equity will be achieved when the unequal burdens worsened by climate change on disadvantaged populations and the communities in which they live are recognized and addressed. These disadvantaged populations include lower-income groups, children, the disabled, and the elderly, and are they often rural.

Description: This session will present the results of a case study investigating the impact of genetic testing on the reduction of health care costs. This will present both actuarial and clinical analysis of genetic testing in addition to researchers who are applying this approach.

Description: Come discuss how reinsurers can work side by side with insurer to better develop products, and lift in the areas that reinsurers have more experience, help matching products with distributions (or vice versa) and provide advanced technologies associated with tools and software. The speakers will also present Direct to Consumer plan from various points of view, i.e., distributors, carriers, and reinsurers. Some case studies will also be presented where traditional reinsurers and asset-intensive reinsurers helped insurers bring products to life.

Description: There is increasing industry interest in applying behavioral science to optimize product design decisions and improve outcomes for both insurers and their customers. With a growing set of options within product designs, predicting consumer behavior continues to get increasingly complex. Join this webcast for an overview of key behavioral economic concepts. Key insights will be shared from two SOA projects that explore how behavioral economic techniques can be used in various parts of the life insurance new business process and enforce management.