Description: The importance of financial wellness has been increasingly recognized in the last few years. More organizations are sponsoring programs to assist people in different stages of their life.

Description: Investment risk management has become a core competency of insurance companies, and much has been discussed on this topic. This session examines the current investment risk management practices such as product line specific hedging and macro hedging, with a focus on what still remains to be addressed—whether the tradeoff of addition risk management is worthwhile.

Description: The evolving specialty pharmacy environment has created difficulties for actuaries pricing and forecasting pharmacy coverage. Unpredictable specialty pharmacy trends have increased insurers' earnings volatility and affected members' health care affordability. The presenters will highlight the current specialty drug development pipeline and explore specialty pharmacy drug trend management strategies. They will also provide concepts to help manage the coming wave of gene and cell therapies.

Description: Investment opportunities are driven by events in the economy and how participants in the financial markets react to those events. This keynote address will highlight current economic themes and their impact on investment opportunities.

Description: The presenters will discuss the current interest rate market environment and what insurance companies can do to best protect themselves from interest rate risk. The presenters, industry leaders in financial risk management, will explore how different products and strategies—including swaps, options, and other derivatives—are being used in today’s market. The discussion will include how to model and measure interest rate risk, how to quantify hedge effectiveness, and how to improve hedging operations.

Description: In this session, we will explore investment solutions that aim to maintain the long-term viability of a pension plan, with considerations on hedging interest rates, credit, inflation, longevity and other risks, while accounting for the many particularities associated with underlying liabilities and their corresponding ramifications.

Description: On October 30, 2006, the UK government's Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change made startling claims about the present value today of climate change effects predicted to emerge primarily 150 years or more in the future. The ensuing debate included challenges to and defenses of the particular methodology used and parameter values selected to perform the discounting of future values. Noticing an overlooked faux pas in the Stern Review, this presentation uncovers the likely motivation for choosing the most mystifying of the parameters values, and provides a lesson on the underpinnings of the basic tool of actuarial science.

Description: The effects of climate change have been widely documented. Whether it’s rising temperatures, more frequent and violent storms or disruption to wild life, there is a consensus in the scientific community that these effects are real. What are the risks and opportunities that climate change brings to an investment portfolio? As society transitions to more sustainable sources of energy and tries to find more sustainable ways to consume, there will be winners and losers. In this presentation, speakers will discuss their process to identify winners in this changing world and highlight the risks to various industries.

Description: Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) are reshaping the insurance industry landscape. Some M&A transactions even garner wide media coverage. The presenters discuss current trends in recent M&A transactions and explore considerations for buyers and sellers leading up to the transactions.

Description: Numerous behavioral finance theories have emerged in recent years, many of which apply to insurance. The presenters look at key theories and their use in explaining, predicting and inducing behavior from the perspective of the health insurance customer journey.