Description: The article provides an overview of the federal tax treatment of long-term care insurance contracts, including a brief history of the tax treatment of long-term care insurance, the requirements that must be satisfied in order to be treated as qualified long-term care insurance under the Internal Revenue Code, and a brief discussion of qualified long-term care combination products and chronic and terminal illness accelerated death benefits offered under life insurance contracts.

Description: This article demonstrates that the alternative method of adjusting DAC amortization for actual experience fails to serve its purpose if amortization is based on amounts in force at the end of a reporting period. In that situation, the method would increase the amortization rate for excess terminations. Applying that increased rate to a lower basis, however, does not reliably reduce the unamortized DAC balance as required.

Description: Discussion of the challenges actuaries face in selecting an interest rate for the purpose of calculating Withdrawal Liability for a Multiemployer pension fund in the US. Recent court cases are referenced.

Description: An overview of how the VM-31 requirements for documenting PBR approaches and assumptions can/should reflect the Actuarial Standard of Practice on Modeling, ASOP No. 56

Description: This article provides an update, as of October 2023, on Financial Reporting Section research projects in process and those recently completed.

Description: This article summarizes key points from the recently published research paper “Deep Learning for Liability-Driven Investment,” which applies reinforcement learning and deep learning techniques to liability-driven investment (LDI).

Description: Importance of non-GAAP operating earnings

Description: The article discusses the continued popularity of indexed UL insurance and possible reasons why a company's actual indexed UL earnings may be below their original pricing expectations for the product. The article discusses several key items that may be the source of that underperformance (e.g., hedge ineffectiveness, policyholder behavior) and the need to monitor earnings and perform analyses to better understand those potential sources.

Description: A typical course has some "hard" parts. These "hard" parts are the places where weaker students begin to fail, lose interest, and give up. The paper introduces a metric by which to evaluate each course topic. High metric values indicate "hard parts" of courses. The paper recommends spending more course time on hard parts and less course time on easy parts. The paper also recommends using disclosure: Tell students - this part of the course is "hard" and they may feel uncomfortable which is why more time is being spent on it." This approach to hard parts works! Failure rates are significantly reduced, while retention, satisfaction, and student scores improve.

Description: This newsletter article provides an update, as of December 2024, on Financial Reporting Section sponsored research projects in process and those recently completed.