Description: Survey of appointed actuaries about asset adequacy testing techniques currently being used in 2012.

Description: The series expansion of a probability density function, known to actuaries by Esscher's name and to statisticians as the saddlepoint approximation, typically gets integrated to approximate probability values under the density, with a location parameter in the expansion chosen to optimize convergence of the integrated series. We review the general form, the accuracy and the derivation of the Esscher approximation. Then we propose using related series expansions for the derivative of a probability density function to approximate the value of the point of maximum likelihood for the density. The key is to make the value of the location parameter an unknown and assume it to be the point of maximum likelihood, which leads to a tractable optimization problem to find its value.

Description: The CSTEP 'Cluster Sampling for Tail Estimation of Probability' system is a desktop-based application to assist actuaries in efficient stochastic modeling through the implementation of Representative Scenario approaches. Its goal is to provide actuaries with an open-source HPC 'High Performance Computation' research platform to select a sample set of representative 'pivot' risk scenarios through user-specified or user-researched distance definitions.