Description: This chart goes with the article "Japanese Variable Annuity Market: Background, Update and Outlook" by Liang Zhang.

Description: A change in the way in which statutory life insurance and annuity reserves are determined in the United States is heading toward adoption. Currently, the Actuarial Opinion and Memorandum Regulation AOMR combines formulaic factor-based minimum reserves with reserve adequacy testing. The American Academy of Actuaries Academy is working with the National Association of Insurance Commissioners NAIC to finalize the basic framework of a principles-based reserve PBR methodology, based on a gross premium valuation, for life insurance products. The NAIC Life and Health Actuarial Task Force LHATF has also been considering Actuarial Guideline VACARVM that would introduce a PBR method for the valuation of variable annuity contracts.

Description: The paper explores developments through 2006 in the application of market-consistent concepts to the measurement of fair values of liabilities for financial reporting purposes. A set of criteria is presented that should be useful in the evaluation of proposed fair value measurement approaches where inputs based on prices observed in an active market with reliable transaction prices are not available. Based on these criteria, one approach is examined that might serve as a basis for the fair value measurement of the liability of life insurance contracts and other financial instruments issued by insurers.

Description: View the FAQs for the 2019 Academy Interest Rate Generator.

Description: View the FAQs for the 2019 Academy Interest Rate Generator.

Description: Insurance regulations are undergoing a paradigm shift in determining capital and reserves. With Solvency II in Europe and principle-based reserving in the United States, the old formula-based static approach is being replaced or supplemented by a principle-based dynamic method. This change requires enhanced modeling, stochastic simulation and sensitivity analysis, which pose challenges to insurers whose infrastructure has not been built for big computation. This paper introduces a method of building complicated models with small reusable modules and running them on a many-task computing platform to achieve high performance with simplicity. The paper presents an example of a term life insurance model built to take advantage of computer hardware for parallel computing at the task level.

Description: In a very general setting this paper describes a straightforward, non-parametric approach to aggregate "stand-alone" or marginal distributions with desired correlations without imposing additional assumptions on those marginals. We then develop two optimizations for the enterprise, one based on maximizing return on economic capital and the other based on a mean -semivariance efficient frontier from the investor point of view.

Description: This note presents a review of calculator financial functions for the Texas Instruments BA II PLUS calculator. This note, including a number of the examples used as illustrations, is reprinted with permission from the 3rd edition of the book Mathematics of Investment and Credit, by S. Broverman. Also, several examples from SOA/CAS math of finance exams old Course 2 will be presented illustrating the use of the calculator.

Description: This month’s global emerging risk is the fall in value of the U.S. dollar. The SOA’s 2010 Emerging Risks Survey found that 49 percent of corporate risk managers identify the fall in value of the U.S. dollar as the top emerging risk. This is a growing concern because of the brewing economic storms that could collide to have a big impact on the value of the U.S. dollar. From the Bubble Risk Bulletin – March 2011.