Description: This article gives the highlights of the 88-page report including detailed assumptions for products including universal life with secondary guarantees (ULSG), cash accumulation universal life (CashAccum), current assumption universal life (CAUL), indexed universal life (IUL) and variable universal life (VUL). The 29 companies and 83 products represented in the report allow for an interesting perspective on premium persistency assumptions used in pricing, cash flow testing (CFT) and generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP)/international financial reporting standard (IFRS) functions. This article covers some general results and ULSG-specific results.

Description: A discussion of the hidden costs of administering complex Products including operational inefficiency, product development constraints, increased time to market, inability to monitor experience, and lost cross selling opportunities among other things

Description: This article focuses on these Key Points - The Situation: Mortality Improvement assumption is not a simple equation. What Could Happen: Any mortality improvement assumption is a bit of a ‘bet’ relative to the ongoing penetration of known developments and the introduction of new developments, such as the appearance of the AIDS epidemic. What Needs to Happen: Better understanding of Mortality Improvement assumption, final assumption, and best estimate approach.

Description: Impact of low and negative interest rates on various aspects of insurer operations including product management, investment management and capital management.

Description: The article talks about market consistent pricing, how risk neutral pricing and real world pricing are not fundamentally different if used appropriately. And using that knowledge, a rather new concept called the risk-adjusted real world pricing, which is a method where a mixture of risk neutral and real world pricing to achieve a holistic view on pricing, will be introduced.

Description: Income i.e., immediate annuities are insurance products that benefit from mortality pooling, so they can generate the highest level of lifetime “income now” per dollar of retirement assets put to work. Including an income annuity as a portion of a retirement portfolio often results in an immediate increase in the level of income generated by that portfolio while at the same time ensuring that a portion of the total income is payable for a lifetime.

Description: A discussion of the hidden costs of bringing innovative products to market, including the costs of expertise gaps and opportunity costs

Description: This article describes how actuaries can get involved in section research including participation on a Project Oversight Group (POG).

Description: In this article, the authors give their overview of sessions that they attended at the June 2012 Life and Annuity Symposium. The sessions discussed are Life Insurance Illustration Regulation (15 years later), Advanced Mortality Topics, and Life and Annuity Product Development Strategies in the Wake of Low Interest Rates.

Description: As we further explore how life insurance customers think and behave, we can address their needs more effectively. Using data and predictive analytics we can better identify groups to target. By embracing technology and approaching customers with the right distribution channels based on preference, we can make life insurance more accessible. We can speak the customers' language. We can understand that they are not all created equal, and tailor products to meet individual needs. In short, we can leverage data, research and technology to become very consumer centric. Getting closer to the customer, can we lower the perceived cost, and raise the perceived benefit of life insurance to a point where customers get excited? Will this not then be a product to buy, not sell?