Description: Dana M. Peterson, chief economist for the Conference Board, has established herself as a visionary, and the go to expert providing insightful analysis and predictions to corporations, associations, and government organizations looking for clarity and foresight into how economic drivers might impact their businesses in the short- and long-term. With over two decades of experience in the field, she serves as the globally recognized think tank’s public face and primary spokesperson on all things related to the economy.

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: Investigate Deloitte's methodology to quantify the cost of health inequities attributable to racial bias, gender/sex bias and socioeconomic bias. We will illustrate the methodology by calculating total potential cost savings across different disease states and discuss both the role that actuaries play in addressing health inequity and the steps that organizations can take to activate health equity.

Description: Come explore an in-depth overview of telehealth to set context and navigate the continuing expansion of telehealth and its integration into the healthcare delivery system. You will examine the forces that shape telehealth offerings and expect a view of the possible futures of this evolving modality.

Description: Behavioral economics research has shown that small details can have a large impact on how a person behaves. As life insurance continues its evolution into the digital domain, life insurers now have an almost infinite number of ways to tweak their product offering, positioning, and delivery to the end consumer. Behavioral science is becoming increasingly more important to optimize these product design decisions and improve outcomes for both insurers and their customers. Discover a brief overview of key behavioral economic concepts and dive into two SOA research projects that are exploring how behavioral economic techniques can be used in different parts of the life insurance value chain. First, you'll start before a policy is even sold, by exploring how behavioral economics, through techniques such as the messenger effect, can be used to increase consumers' comprehension of policies and life insurance's value. Second, you'll look at how underwriting question design can impact applicant behavior and lead to higher quality application data. At the conclusion, you'll enjoy having a better understanding of how behavioral economic techniques can be applied in a life insurance context.

Description: This article is a summary of the SOA Research Institute report published in April 2023 on Megatrends Impacting the Future of Retirement Plans.

Description: Many retirement actuaries have experience developing, implementing, and monitoring Liability Driven Investing (LDI) strategies for plan sponsors. These strategies typically involve modifying a plan’s investment strategy to remove a significant portion of the investment and interest rate risk now or at some point in the future when specific triggers are met. The tactics often involve the use of fixed income assets to cash flow and/or duration match the liabilities. In the spirit of helping actuaries expand their roles in an evolving defined contribution world, this article explores the application of LDI and derisking strategies within defined contribution and individual retirement accounts. The economic theory behind this approach is called the lifecycle hypothesis, or lifecycle finance. The benefits of the lifecycle finance method are that it provides a safe approach to save for retirement and a secure source of floor income during retirement. Similar to pension plans, each individual has his or her own idiosyncratic needs, wants, and risks that should be considered. Actuaries are uniquely situated to help defined contribution plan sponsors, individuals, and even themselves implement the lifecycle finance approach by developing and distributing tools and methods that focus on income (rather than wealth), LDI strategies, and personalization.

Description: Review of changes made to life insurance taxation in Australia.

Description: This paper provides a high-level review of climate models for the actuary and shows they are not impenetrable, intriguing the reader enough to seek out additional resources.