Description: The euro, the single European currency, can significantly change the way the world does business and will have some important implications on the ability of the United States and its currency to dominate the world's political and financial system.

Description: This article gives insight into the economic atmosphere in the Netherlands after the financial collapse in the United States.

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: This paper, written following a UK Actuarial meeting, is divided into three parts. Taken together, the three parts intend to provide the reader with an overview of the first 101 years of financial economics, with particular attention on those developments that are of special interest to actuaries.

Description: Evidence is building from the physical sciences that we are starting to reach some of earth’s limits. Unless we can find some technological solutions, once these limits are reached, we can expect to see a very changed world. Instead of having constantly increasing resources available to us, we can expect ever-decreasing resources to be available. Instead of seeing year after year of growth, increasing longevity and improving morbidity, we can expect the opposite.

Description: Part II of this discussion focuses on current investment and funding practices for pension plans. Taken from the March 2005 issue of the Bulletin of the Canadian Institute of Actuaries.

Description: Many retirement actuaries have experience developing, implementing, and monitoring Liability Driven Investing (LDI) strategies for plan sponsors. These strategies typically involve modifying a plan’s investment strategy to remove a significant portion of the investment and interest rate risk now or at some point in the future when specific triggers are met. The tactics often involve the use of fixed income assets to cash flow and/or duration match the liabilities. In the spirit of helping actuaries expand their roles in an evolving defined contribution world, this article explores the application of LDI and derisking strategies within defined contribution and individual retirement accounts. The economic theory behind this approach is called the lifecycle hypothesis, or lifecycle finance. The benefits of the lifecycle finance method are that it provides a safe approach to save for retirement and a secure source of floor income during retirement. Similar to pension plans, each individual has his or her own idiosyncratic needs, wants, and risks that should be considered. Actuaries are uniquely situated to help defined contribution plan sponsors, individuals, and even themselves implement the lifecycle finance approach by developing and distributing tools and methods that focus on income (rather than wealth), LDI strategies, and personalization.

Description: This article addresses the difficulties of risk modeling in a poor economic environment. The problems include imperfect vendors of data, facing events that have never occurred before, unpredictable consumer behavior, conflicting data sources, and AAA credit doesn't always mean AAA.

Description: In this session, senior pension and insurance investment professionals will share their thoughts on current investment topics. Attendees will hear about leading edge investment ideas and practices from industry leaders.