Description: Discusses the market, demographic, and macroeconomic factors that affect actuaries' choices for the assumptions they use in the pricing and valuation of many insurance products.

Description: Chronicles the journey made by Allstate to enhance its process for managing risk and ultimately find ways to better exploit risk opportunities.

Description: This article is an interview with Phelim Boyle, an educator, actuary, PhD, author, financial engineer and recipient of the IAFE/ SunGard Financial Engineer of the Year Award and perhaps best known for his research into Monte Carlo methods.

Description: MacGinnitie discusses how retirement may change in the 21st century. First, he discusses what forces are shaping current retirement trends and what might happen to redefine retirement in the 21st century. He then examines what this might mean for private pension systems, and how actuaries can adapt.

Description: Discusses potential implications of increasing life spans in many areas.

Description: This article presents an interview with Prakash Shimpi about his career and the practice of Enterprise Risk Management [ERM]. Shimpi, FSA, CFA, joined the Tillinghast business of Towers Perrin in November 2004 as practice leader with global responsibility for ERM.

Description: The Society's vision is for actuaries to be recognized as the leading professionals in the modeling and management of financial risk and contingent events. To that end, this column will regularly update members on the latest initiatives underway aimed at helping us realize this vision.

Description: This article is a summary of the roundtable discussion with a group of panelists on how to appropriately measure public pension plan liabilities. The crux of the debate is whether public pension plans should disclose a market value of liability - MVL - or whether current disclosures are adequate.