Description: This paper is an introduction to AI technology designed for actuaries to understand how the technology works, the potential risks it could introduce, and how to mitigate risks.

Description: With the growing threat of cyber incidents, organizations and governments are rightfully concerned. In recent years, cyber incidents have caused significant losses to entities and insurers across the world. Therefore, there is a need to understand and provide greater context around the topic of catastrophic cyber risk, which has implications for insurance companies, reinsurers, regulators, consumers, and society. Taking a multi-disciplinary, holistic approach, an expert panel study was conducted on catastrophic cyber risk in this four-part series of discussions and subsequent reports.

Description: On January 12, 2023, the Arizona Blockchain Applied Research Center (AZ BARC) and the SOA Research Institute jointly ran a workshop on the use of blockchain technology in insurance and financial industries. The workshop included presentations focused on academic research in the blockchain space by Arizona State University, AZ BARC and an industry expert panel assembled by the SOA Research Institute. This document summarizes the research highlights and the discussions that occurred during the two-hour workshop.

Description: Decentralized finance, or DeFi, is an emerging financial system powered by blockchain technology. This research report aims to introduce actuaries to DeFi and help them develop a solid understanding of DeFi. It will begin with addressing “what is DeFi?” by providing an introduction on blockchains and DeFi. It will then discuss in further detail the key characteristics, applications, opportunities, and risks of DeFi. After providing the foundation, this report will discuss the potential adoption of DeFi and its interaction with the current financial system (sometime referred to as traditional finance for contrast with DeFi), and the implications for practicing and aspiring actuaries. In addition, a glossary of terms used in DeFi and a brief history of the development of DeFi have been included in the appendix.

Description: The global doubling of information content has been estimated to occur at a rate of every 12 hours, and conceivably faster. This ‘infowhelm’ is a double-edged sword for insurers. While maximization of the global knowledge base can fuel innovation, it can occur only in the context of reasonable cost for a higher benefit. The insurance industry – underwriters and actuaries in particular – are challenged to constantly examine new innovations that promise to raise confidence and protective value for insurability, within legal limits. This report aims to be the first of several to alert the SOA of promising innovations for the profession.

Description: The objective of this paper is to provide a practical guide with concrete case studies to help actuaries implement artificial intelligence and machine learning (AIML) to help accelerate the speed of analysis for life and annuity actuarial modeling. We do so by researching the existing literature regarding AIML and its applicability to stochastic modeling and exploring case studies.

Description: On October 7, 2023, the SOA Research Institute assembled an industry expert panel to discuss current issues in GenAI. The group was diverse in terms of employment, including company actuaries from life, health and property/casualty backgrounds, as well as consultants from various kinds of firms.

Description: This project enhances the current understanding of cyber risks in the smart home ecosystem from the insurance industry's perspective. In particular, the quantitative framework and pricing strategies developed in this project can be immediately adopted/adapted by actuaries to price the cyber risks for smart homes, a fast-growing insurance market.

Description: This report explores how artificial intelligence can be applied to investment and retirement planning, highlighting real-world applications, risks, and recommendations.

Description: This report captures expert insights from a March 2025 roundtable on how generative AI is shaping actuarial work and insurance industry practices.