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.

Description: This month’s global emerging risk is China’s inflation. The SOA’s 2010 Emerging Risks Survey found that 41 percent of corporate risk managers predicted a Chinese economic hard landing as the emerging risk that will have the greatest impact over the next few years and need to be considered for thoughtful preparation for potential global repercussions. From the Bubble Risk Bulletin, July /August 2011.

Description: HR Magazine article quoting Jim Glickman talking about long-term care. Discusses increasing popularity of long term care as an employee benefit and discusses carrier and plan selection.

Description: This study note focuses on actuarial applications and loss distributions for insurance products.

Description: Feature article discussing the use of Bayesian Networks as predictive modeling tools.

Description: Marketing tips for actuarial clubs to market their events including the use of social networking websites.