Description: Delves into the impact of rising interest rates on annuity product management, with a focus on the challenges of disintermediation and implications to hedging. Learn about in-force management actions, best practices for managing annuities in a changing environment and associated risks. Explore how companies are revising their hedging strategies to adapt to shifting market conditions and regulatory framework changes. Gain a comprehensive understanding of the relation between rising interest rates and disintermediation, its financial and business impacts, and strategies for managing business and setting assumptions during periods of high disintermediation. Come away with practical strategies for optimizing returns, minimizing risks, and navigating the challenges and opportunities associated with annuity product management in the current interest rate environment.

Description: Data science is being used to create more algorithms used across a variety of applications, including underwriting and pricing. As data science gains traction, it is imperative that we as actuaries consider the ethical implications of use of these algorithms. This session will discuss techniques for evaluating whether your algorithms are inadvertently making biased decisions and considerations for ensuring that your algorithms minimize risk of making biased decisions. Learn to identify potential ethical issues with their algorithms and techniques to address them.

Description: The session will highlight trends in recent industry mortality and lapse studies that have been conducted, including areas where individual companies typically have limited data. The sources of data feature SOA studies as well as other industry studies conducted by consultants and/or reinsurers. Gain an understanding of current drivers of mortality and lapse experience for life insurance evidenced in industry studies, and an understanding of available data to supplement experience in areas where you may have limited internal experience.

Description: Most, if not all of us, have experienced a time when we were involved in a conversation that made us uncomfortable. After a short presentation to provide things to consider prior or during a difficult conversation, attendees will work at their tables to discuss a variety of topics. After each topic has been discussed, someone at each table will be given the opportunity to share something insightful with the group.

Description: In light of recent regulatory developments and international best practices, the Bermuda Monetary Authority has introduced proposed enhancements to the Bermuda regulatory framework for long-term commercial insurers. During this panel discussion, discuss the potential impacts of these proposed regulatory changes for existing commercial insurers and new entrants to the Bermuda life reinsurance market.

Description: After three decades of relatively stable overall inflation trends, the United States has seen significant increases over the last twelve months. What could this mean for inflation in the medical sector? Explore past patterns between the two phenomena, and what drivers stakeholders can monitor to be best aware of what could be coming.

Description: Explore key findings of an SOA-funded research paper on telehealth that will be published in 2023. The COVID-19 pandemic initially caused some health care delivery to shift away from in-person transactions to a more digital form of transactions, including telehealth, e-mails, remote patient monitoring and other forms of communication.

Description: Get highlights from recently published and upcoming research from the SOA Research Institute, including work on specialty pharmacy and the long-term impacts of COVID-19. Presenters will focus on the financial impacts of these issues as well as trends and other actuarial considerations.

Description: Join a discussion on the tax implications for direct writers ceding annuity blocks for both onshore and offshore reinsurance arrangements. Get an introduction to the tax consequences of the risk transfer of annuity features and guarantees to reinsurers to reinsurers that are U.S.-based and not U.S. domiciled.

Description: Are the choices we make the same in certain versus uncertain situations? What pushes our choices in one direction or another? In this session, join our discussion on the elements that make up consumer choice architecture, how they interact with risk appetite and how to intervene in risk choices, using the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) as a case study. Together, we will explore behavioral considerations in risk appetite from the individual consumer and public policy perspectives. The latter will include environmental, social and governance considerations, including the challenges of climate change in a divided political landscape with limited resources. We will cite and use program data to support behavioral assessments. Appetite as a function of both risk preference and risk perception will serve as a foundational premise for the presentation.