Description: This article discusses various measures that are used to determine a plan's funded status and offers suggestions for addressing pension funding issues.

Description: The introduction of a chart which summarizes post-retirement risks as a resource to actuaries and plan sponsors. The full chart is available on the Society web site.

Description: An excerpt from the 2003 Annual Report of the Board of Trustees of the Federal Hospital Insurance and Federal Supplementary Medical Insurance Trust Funds which describes the basic methodology and assumptions used in the estimates for Medicare Part B under the intermediate assumptions.

Description: This article summarizes the approach taken by the Canadian Institute of Actuaries to develop mortality tables and mortality improvement scales for use in Canadian pension plans based on Canadian population data. It also summarizes the additional factors pension actuaries have to consider in using the new tables and scales.

Description: Spending down (decumulating) assets during retirement involves complex decisions about which specific assets to liquidate in what amounts, in what order, and at what times. No established methodology exists for making these decisions in individual cases. This paper describes a manual process that individuals can follow, a process that could be automated for wider use.

Description: The Effects of Triple-X on Product Design by Mary Bahna-Nolan from Product Development News, August 2000, Issue No. 50.

Description: Feature article from the newsletter Product Matters discussing variable annuities and principle-based approaches to reserve and capital requirements.

Description: On October 30, 2015, the SOA Assumption Development and Governance Group, an informal discussion group consisting of nearly 200 interested actuaries with topics pertaining to actuarial assumption development and governance, organized an industry discussion call on end-to-end assumption documentation practices. The purpose of this call was to generate a large list of ideas for best-practice assumption documentation. More than thirty companies were represented in the call, including direct insurers, reinsurers and consulting firms. This article is the work product of the discussion written by Laurie Li and Alex Zaidlin.

Description: View the complete issue for the August 2014 Reinsurance News newsletter.

Description: This article describes some of the drawbacks to the assessment of longevity risk adopted by most practitioners within the UK together with an initiative that provides a platform for an alternative approach that is both (a) more forward-looking in nature and (b) can complement current practices.