Description: Discussion the issues/difficulties associated with setting mortality assumptions for the later durations of life insurance illustrations. Because some UL products incorporate low cost of insurance charges in late durations as part of the current scale in the product design, some conclude that mortality improvement assumptions are being employed in the disciplined current scale, in violation of the Model Illustrations Regulation.

Description: Discusses current dynamics of the UL and Indexed UL markets.

Description: AG 49 pertains to illustrated life insurance products with a crediting rate tied to an index. The guideline discusses the maximum illustrated credited rate and format changes to illustrations.

Description: Key excerpts from research recently performed by Milliman consultants for the SOA on the impact of VM-20 on life insurance product development.

Description: A summary of the recent UL/IUL survey conducted by Milliman.

Description: The article (Part 1) describes the potential problems when policyholders take income streams from IUL, demonstrated by historical data.

Description: The article highlights key considerations as companies begin to reserve for their IUL products under PBR.

Description: This paper applies the research in Prospect Theory of Kahneman and Tversky to explain why sales of annuities lag sales of life insurance products. The author theorizes that life insurance is easier to sell because customers perceive themselves to be in the domain of losses, while potential annuity customers perceive themselves to be in the domain of gains. Kahneman and Tversky showed us that people are mostly risk averse in the domain of gains and risk seeking in the domain of losses. Purchase of an annuity or life product is a risky investment. Customers will find it easier to take the risk in the life insurance domain of losses than the annuity domain of gains. The author then proposes a hybrid life annuity product that might address both mortality and longevity risk in one product that would allow both products to be more competitive than stand-alone products.

Description: This article asks the question, Is It appropriate to underwrite changes to UL death benefit options?

Description: This article reviews the topics discussed at the December 2004 meeting of the Life and Health Actuarial task force. The covered topics include Actuarial Guideline 38 and Reserves for Variable Annuities C-3 Phase 2 reserves.