Description: The SOA concluded surveys that examined the actuarial profession from the perspectives of SOA members and employers. This report presents major conclusions based on the results of these surveys. The analysis has two main objectives: • To compare actuaries’ and employers’ views of actuarial performance on skills that are valuable in today’s market. • To compare actuaries’ and employers’ images of the actuarial profession.

Description: HR Magazine article quoting Jim Glickman talking about long-term care. Discusses increasing popularity of long term care as an employee benefit and discusses carrier and plan selection.

Description: A supplemental report conducted in 2009 to contrast results of the 2008 study, 'Will Retirement Assets Last a Lifetime'? It discusses retirees confidence in having sufficient assets to fully fund their retirement, their willingness to take risk, efforts to control spending and their use of financial advisers.

Description: The Society of Actuaries SOA developed the ‘Risks and Process of Retirement Survey Report’ to help identify retirement risks and raise awareness of approaches to manage those risks. The survey analyzes the leading retirement risks of men and women, ages 45 to 80, who are either retired or still in the workforce. This document provides a summary of the results and provides information on how to obtain the Survey Report’s summary or a full report.

Description: Rosas' presentation from the 40th Actuarial Research Conference focusing on demographics in Mexico. From Actuarial Research Clearing House, 2006.

Description: The Defined Benefit 'DB' underpin Defined Contribution hybrid pension plan offers an attractive combination of benefit security and upside potential for pension plan members, and offers cost containment for employers, whilst still ensuring the provision of adequate equitable benefits. The DB underpin guarantee is valued and hedged as a financial option within the traditional funding paradigms of actuarial science. However, the average monthly hedging costs are time dependent and can be unstable when employees are close to retirement. This is the abstract of a paper that proposes some cost control approaches to reduce the volatility of the hedging cost.

Description: Development of annuities markets is a critical element of any private system. In Mexico, when the new pension regimen came into existence in 1997, the Mexican Institute of Social Security [IMSS] was supposed to buy a single premium annuity for all the people who become eligible under the new regime. Disability pensions represent 37% of total pensions sold up to date. Mortality of disables show substantial differences against the mortality table use to compute the annuity. Most of the differences can be explained by looking at the disability causes. Using information for social security for 2001 and 2002, regarding mortality and disability, this is the abstract of a paper that presents the main causes of disability among disables and the main causes of mortality of those disables who died in their first and second year of disability. The analysis of those cases apart from explaining the important differences between the expected mortality and the observed mortality during the first two years of disability, also explains some of the latter changes in the operational rules of IMSS.

Description: This paper highlights the menace of overweight and obesity which are on the rise. Health care systems and insurance industries are directly affected. Liability claims are on waiting. The food related damage claims are costly. Insurers are therefore driven to find a solution: classify overweight and obesity as a group, adjust their premium to reflect the cost, and justify the classification and the adjustments.

Description: This is the abstract of a paper that addresses the question of how an employer can offer phased retirement in such a way that, indeed, employees work longer before fully retiring.

Description: What is the 'best' post-retirement financial strategy for a particular participant of a defined contribution plan? The answer to this question must accommodate a number of risks, the most obvious of which are related to longevity, inflation, investment, and health. Moreover, what makes this question especially intriguing is that its solution must be molded to the wealth, features and agenda of a particular individual and/or family. Many of the constraints and goals are qualitative, and standard market and population metrics may have limited significance. This is the abstract of a paper that deals with implementation issues, qualitative goals and constraints, and tailor-made solutions.