Description: International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans research shows that financial education programs succeed when customized to and convenient for the audience.

Description: This webinar will discuss and illustrate professionalism standards in an interactive case study format. The session will begin with a lightning round discussion with audience polling on professionalism topics and standards of investment practice. Participants will then work through several case studies in an investment context, each of which will have its own specific professionalism considerations. Audience polling and discussion will be included as part of each case study.

Description: Hot Topics in Setting Pension Return Assumptions is the third in a series, following Mathematics of Pension Return Assumption and Inflation, focusing on Effects, Forecasts, and Role in Pension Valuations. What time horizon is more appropriate for Capital Market Assumption (CMA) forecasts: mid-term or long-term time horizon, or a blend of both? How do we map the asset classes of a plan's own investment policy to the asset classes of investment forecasters' CMAs? If we use asset-smoothing for valuation assets, should we use market-driven expected returns or smoothed/average versions of them?

Description: Call for essays on how actuaries can apply their financial skills to support non-profit financial management and promote societal purpose.

Description: Insurers have long relied on scenario analysis to understand the long-term impacts of potential business decisions, but the advent of rapidly changing market environments and a growing desire to optimize capital has spurred business leaders to leverage new tools in order to explore potential options.

Description: On January 12, 2023, the Arizona Blockchain Applied Research Center (AZ BARC) and the SOA Research Institute jointly ran a workshop on the use of blockchain technology in insurance and financial industries. The workshop included presentations focused on academic research in the blockchain space by Arizona State University, AZ BARC and an industry expert panel assembled by the SOA Research Institute. This document summarizes the research highlights and the discussions that occurred during the two-hour workshop.

Description: In the fourth quarter of 2022, publicly traded life insurers reported on their financial and operational activities, which included a downturn in income from alternative investments, the continuing impact of COVID, the impact of equity market returns on variable annuity products, and growth trends related to pension risk transfer transactions.

Description: In this webcast, we will overview the recent trends in the pension landscapes, as well as discuss investment solutions that assist with navigation through volatile market conditions. Learn more about the challenges that investors face now, as well as in the past. If you're ready to dive into the issues of investing during a period of inflation, monetary tightening and turbulent financial markets, then join us and discover more about what's going on in the pension and retirement industries.

Description: Modeling Approaches and Challenges focuses on approaches to real world simulation and the challenges and considerations in real world simulation. Topics include: A frequency domain approach to build realistic multi-horizon scenarios. (Ortec approach) Cascade models structure linking models for major asset classes and economic variables. (Moody’s approach) Overview of models, calibrations & approaches within the context of different use cases. Deterministic & stochastic approaches. Importance of model re-calibration flexibility. We will also discuss specific insights into considerations and challenges in real world simulation, which include topics like: Setting capital market assumptions and/or calibration targets. Assumptions about correlation and causality. Calibrating the model to capital markets assumptions. Validating the model against capital market assumptions. Role of history, market data and stylized facts. Importance of back testing. Calibrating the model to multiple investment horizons. Inclusion of alterative asset classes such as private equity, infrastructure, and direct real estate. Associated issues of limited data, illiquidity and greater uncertainty about calibration targets.

Description: Explore insights to non-traditional actuarial roles from a panelist with experiences in data science, finance and entertainment. The panelist will be sharing their perspectives on their non-traditional actuarial role in relation to the actuarial profession.