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: This document is from the March 2025 edition of the SOA Research Institute AI Bulletin, focusing on artificial intelligence initiatives within the actuarial community. It includes articles on strategic principles, professional development products, NAIC updates, and tips for prompting the language model.

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.