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: 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: Where once an insurer's chief investment officer (CIO) reigned supreme over assets-aided and sometimes hindered by the involvement of a chief risk officer (CRO)-these days managing portfolio risk and return seems to be an altogether more complex affair. No less of this complexity has come from the expansion by insurers into illiquid assets in the last decade. Moving away from traditional assets has raised scrutiny of liquidity risk management, but how do insurers tackle this? In a world 'brimming with large and growing portfolio allocations to illiquid private assets,' liquidity management concerns are distinct from a typical CRO's portfolio or asset risk orientation. There's a need to look at all aspects of a fund's liquidity demands and sources, such as top-down asset allocation, bottom-up private market deal-making activities, and internal and external operations. A dedicated liquidity management function should also be able to identify both explicit and potential liquidity demands and sources and, in particular, stay in touch with market movements and the regulatory environment. It should identify, evaluate and keep at-the-ready possible external liquidity facilities-for example, the secondary market for private equity stakes, a collateralized portfolio liquidity line, a repurchase agreement or a futures program. A high-quality liquidity management team can also identify when a fund has too much liquidity, the cost of being overly cautious and how to put excess liquidity to work.

Description: The National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) project for the transition to a new real-world economic scenario generator (ESG) prescribed for principle-based reserve and capital calculations selected a vendor in the fall of 2020. The American Academy of Actuaries and other interested parties have been assisting the NAIC in this transition. Over the past four years, extensive analysis, model validation, and comparison work has been done. There have been many updates on the project but few opportunities to obtain an in-depth understanding of the new features of the new ESG and its impact on reserves and capital. Practitioners are very interested in the questions: - How different are the scenarios from the Academy/Society of Actuaries ESG and the new NAIC ESG? - How different are the models and techniques used to create the scenarios in both generators? - Is there a significant difference in capital and reserve requirements for model office tests between the two ESGs? - Are there concerns with the new NAIC ESG? The session addresses each of these questions in detail. At the conclusion of the session attendees will appreciate the key differences between the model structure and scenario performance of the two ESGs and will understand the differences in capital and reserve requirements for model office tests across the two ESGs. Attendees will also learn how the initial yield curve fitting differs between the models, about fund mapping considerations, and the interpretability of parameters in the new NAIC model.

Description: This session will provide an analysis of the latest activities and trends in asset-intensive reinsurance (AIR), including life, annuity, long-term care (LTC), and pension risk transfer (PRT) transactions, and their anticipated impact on the industry in the coming years. Speakers will delve into the strategic considerations of reinsurers, the concerns and preferences of insurers, and the perspectives of rating agencies. Through a case study, the session will demonstrate how asset-intensive reinsurance can serve as a capital lever and profitability enhancer within the evolving regulatory landscape. The discussion will highlight how these strategies support insurers' strategic initiatives, enhance internal rates of return (IRR) and other key performance indicators (KPI), facilitate sales growth and product launches, and improve the financial strength of the company. Additionally, as many of these transactions utilize alternative asset classes to enhance yields, the speakers will examine the differences among these asset classes and the key considerations when incorporating or modeling them in actuarial work.

Description: S&P Global published a revised insurance capital model in November 2023. The revisions add considerable complexity to their insurance capital model and rely more on companies to fill out the detailed model inputs. In return, the new model allows for better risk differentiation and an overall better assessment of insurance company risk-adjusted capitalization. In this session we will review the new capital model in-depth, considering its implications for capital management and product development. By the end of the session, attendees should have a deeper understanding of the revised criteria of the S&P insurance capital model, including its most important risk drivers and how it relates to the AM Best 'BCAR' and the NAIC RBC capital models.

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: Financial planning and analysis (FP&A) has become increasingly important to the life insurance industry in recent years. Insurance companies must navigate complex changes in financial reporting and capital requirements to manage risk effectively. Furthermore, technological growth has changed the landscape of the theoretical capabilities of FP&A; however, many FP&A areas struggle to implement the sophisticated modeling techniques required to manage the long-term liabilities associated with life and annuity products.

Description: This session will consider how catastrophic gaps in risk management practices contributed to the failure of regional banks in the first half of 2023. Panelists will explore ERM practices and potential corrective actions, based on insurance industry and pension plan best practices, that could have mitigated against the failures.

Description: Learn about considerations and industry observed trends which cover different ways companies try to manage their inforce business in low and rapidly rising interest environments. You will explore M&A, block transaction, and offshore reinsurance solutions.