Description: Each calendar quarter, the Society of Actuaries (SOA) calls for essays that highlight practical applications of academic research published in the North American Actuarial Journal. This essay met the publication criteria of the judging committee. It outlines a practical application of “Hedging Longevity Risk: Does the Structure of the Financial Instrument Matter?”1 by Richard D. MacMinn and Nan Zhu. The essay is solely an expression of the views, opinions, and ideas of the essay author for applying the original research to actuarial work in industry.

Description: This document is a Request for Proposals (RFP) published by the SOA Research Institute, seeking comprehensive research to evaluate insurance coverage for chronic conditions in China, focusing on critical illness morbidity rates and potential benefits of innovative insurance product designs. The RFP outlines research objectives, proposal requirements, selection process, and conditions for research funding.

Description: An introductory article for the June 2022 issue of the General Insurance Insights e-newsletter.

Description: On March 31, 2022, the SOA Research Institute assembled an expert panel to discuss key considerations related to climate risk analysis applied to life and health insurance companies. The panelists were selected to represent a wide and diverse array of opinions, and were encouraged to contribute from their own, individual perspective working in areas such as insurance, reinsurance, state regulation, consultancy, meteorology, and climate finance. A summary of the main discussion points is presented in this report.

Description: A call for proposals for research projects exploring recent insurance product innovations and their impacts on the industry. It outlines the background, purpose, objectives, proposal requirements, selection process, submission details, conditions, and conflict of interest disclosures.

Description: Call for essays that provide practical applications of in-depth research papers that will be published in the upcoming edition of the NAAJ.

Description: In 2024, 27 disasters in the United States resulted in damages exceeding $1 billion. These disasters included two winter storms, one wildfire event, one drought/heatwave event, one flooding event, six tornado outbreaks, 11 severe weather/hail events and five hurricanes. The costliest of these events was Hurricane Helene, which resulted in 219 deaths and cost $79.6 billion , although the early 2025 wildfires in the Los Angeles, California area threaten to exceed this economic cost. In Canada, insured catastrophic losses totaled C$8.5 billion in 2024, making it the costliest year on record for the country. Outside the United States and Canada, Cyclone Chido killed more than 1,000 people, a heatwave in Bangladesh impacted 33 million people and a drought in Columbia has had a significant impact on the economy there .

Description: This project pertained to the development of anew Actuarial Science Learning Community model, involving four types of students' engagement: academic coursework, residential life, research, and professional development. The model provided students an immersive exposure to Data Science from the Actuarial perspective, which will result in Actuarial students greatly expanding their skill set and future job opportunities, at the intersection of Actuarial Science and Data Science.

Description: In the past months, as COVID-19 has forced the reduced activity in the U.S. economy there has been some very substantial, but varied effects on the U.S. healthcare system. There is a lot of potential for confusion amongst providers and patients with regards to decisions related to which services ought to be rendered and which ought to be deferred. Two specific agencies – the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), and the American College of Surgeons (ACS) have put together some guidance to add more clarity towards what types of services should be provided and what types ought to be deferred. In addition, this paper includes a discussion on what types of services are most likely to be deferred, and which ones will accrue pent-up demand to be released when many of the deferred services become available again.

Description: Emerging technologies like GenAI will be more disruptive than past technological developments, such as spreadsheets, low-code data and dashboarding tools, and cloud computing. This article will explore how how we can lead ourselves, our teams, and our organizations to thrive within a defined modern value proposition, using one of two archetype roles: actuaries as business partners or actuaries as developers.