Description: This paper estimates the acquisition and maintenance costs associated with life policies as a function of the amount of insurance and number of policies of an insurer by estimating a cost function for our sample of insurers.

Description: Appendix B is round 2 questionnaire on the study of selected economic variables using the Delphi method from the Delphi Report. See the SOA website Research for the complete report of the Delphi Study of Economic Variables Report which includes all the appendices.

Description: This report examines a simple but accurate means of assessing discount rate sensitivity.

Description: The Society of Actuaries provides a snapshot of the findings from the SOA and Stanford research report, “The Next Evolution in Defined Contribution Retirement.” The fact sheet provides employers and plan sponsors with tips on how to build and offer retirement income generators.

Description: This is the fourth report in a series on the current state and future opportunity of the retirement market in China. In this report, edition four of the series, you will learn about the various options available to individuals to fund their retirement.

Description: The Health Plan Employee Data and Information Set 'HEDIS' is a set of standardized performance measures initially designed to enable purchasers of health care to evaluate and compare a managed care plan’s administrative performance. The National Committee for Quality Assurance, known as the NCQA, developed HEDIS in 1991. Since its introduction, HEDIS has become a widely used tool for measuring a broad array of health plan functions. This study evaluates the reliability and validity of HEDIS measures. It also reviews the usefulness of HEDIS as an indicator of health care quality.

Description: The Joint CAS-CIA-SOA Risk Management Section commissioned this report to explore the practices that would enable a company to optimize the integration of risk, capital, and financial management. Based on our research, several effective practices have emerged relative to implementation of a linked environment. These include: 1) Development of a corporate oversight committee, representing senior management commitment to implementation. 2) Development of a framework, specifying how the goal of linkage will be accomplished. 3) Risk identification and assessment, clearly key to the understanding of the organization’s risk profile. 4) Actual linkage of risk, capital and financial management through the use of economic capital modeling and performance measurement on a risk-adjusted basis. 5) Education and communication throughout the organization.

Description: Analysis of possible mathematical relationships between hospital quality and hospital billed or allowed charges or other measures, using quality data as defined by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services along with the Hospital Quality Alliance for their Hospital Quality Initiative.

Description: “Non-traditional” guarantees refer to guarantees that are in addition to traditional mortality, expense, and interest guarantees. Examples of such types of guarantees are death and living benefits on variable annuity contracts and no-lapse guarantees on universal life or variable universal life products. The purpose of this paper is to offer practitioners an overview of the various issues concerning the pricing of these guarantees, the many other issues which need to be analyzed and addressed in the determination of risks and the management of the block of business, and the results of a company survey of practices. This paper is based on the working knowledge of the authors, a broad compilation of literature and the company survey results. At the end of most sections of the paper, we have provided a list of resources which we have selected as some of the best sources available for those practitioners interested in researching the subject matter further.

Description: This page contains research and research tools related to U.S. population data.