Description: This session will provide an update on international implications of current tax developments affecting the life insurance industry, including: International add-on taxes from the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) Base Erosion Anti-Abuse Tax (BEAT) and impacts on offshore reinsurance An overview of the Global Intangible Low-Taxed Income (GILTI) tax Legislative activities impacting company taxation

Description: The American Academy of Actuaries will present on current initiatives that impact the U.S. statutory reserving methodology for non-variable annuity contracts. In particular, the development of a principle-based reserving framework on non-variable annuity contracts will be discussed, including framework elements, assumptions, and methodology. The session will provide an update on the status of regulatory discussions and the timeline for future changes to reserves. By the end of the session, attendees will understand what changes are being made to non-variable annuity reserves, details underlying existing proposals, and the anticipated timing of such emerging changes. This session is intended to the meet the needs of actuaries focused on annuity reserve calculations, financial reporting, and valuation.

Description: Companies exempt from PBR can benefit by borrowing ideas and lessons learned from companies that perform and operate in a PBR world. The presenters will discuss VM requirements related to governance policies, as well as assumption and margin setting, plus model validations and controls which can benefit smaller insurance companies. Attendees will learn about new actuarial practices and how the PBR methodology and Valuation Manual can influence their work and highlight available resources.

Description: Interest Maintenance Reserve ("IMR") has become a hot topic recently due to rising interest rates, causing decreases or even negative IMR balances for some insurers. This article aims to exam some new questions facing financial reporting actuaries: - How should negative IMR be treated for statutory reporting? - What are the other actuarial implications of negative IMR? - What have regulators done and/or plan to do about negative IMR? - What are potential mitigants?

Description: In this article, we explore key insights from Oliver Wyman's 2020 Life PBR Emerging Practices Survey, which provides a broad industry perspective with more than 50 companies participating representing 95 percent of the individual life market (by written premium). Insights include the impact of PBR on reserves and profitability in addition to emerging practices related to product design, assumption development, and methodology decisions.

Description: As the portion of inforce business valued under PBR grows, it becomes increasingly important to not only calculate reserves for point-in-time valuation but to also project reserves. This is especially critical for actuarial functions such as pricing, business strategy/forecasting, and asset adequacy testing. In this session, we will review PBR projection techniques based on work completed by the American Academy of Actuaries when developing the PBA Projection Practice Note. In addition, this session will examine specific challenges that can arise when actuaries use models to project reserves at future dates. Topics covered include mortality improvement, credibility, scenario generation, starting asset projections, and various other technical issues related to nested modeling requiring both inner and outer loop projections.

Description: Overview of regulations and best practices for governance of PBR valuation processes, including standards, oversight, controls and review related to the PBR analysis

Description: The discount rate is one of the most critical topics in IFRS 17, which may have important repercussion on product profitability. Having a low discount rate may indicate a low profitability of a group of contracts, while a realistic expectation may differ. A similar issue was prevalent especially for U.S. companies when discount rates were set using a market consistent framework. The session is intended to help develop a discount rate framework that aligns with the business practices and address the concerns around the market consistent framework. This session will cover practical implementation considerations to set and apply IFRS 17 discount rates. The panelists will discuss alternative approaches to allow for a level of illiquidity premium for business supported by fixed assets with credit risks. Discussions will also cover other implementation considerations including granularity of setting the discount rate, application to new business, implications on asset and liability modeling, and a planning aspect for a successful implementation of the discount rate setting process. The panelists will share case studies to illustrate different approaches of setting the discount rate and their potential financial impacts. At the conclusion of the session, attendees will be able to: understand key requirements of setting discount rates under IFRS 17; understand how to align the discount rate to the actual business practices; understand implications of the discount rate in actuarial modeling; understand potential impacts on financial results; and develop a realistic plan to set discount rates appropriate to the business practices.

Description: Performance measurement is not the primary purpose of either GAAP or statutory accounting. This article discusses alternative methods of reporting used by life insurance companies to better measure financial performance.

Description: VM-22 was first introduced into the Valuation Manual in 2018. A number of changes have been made since its introduction, with more expected on the way. This article compares valuation requirements for income annuities pre- and post-VM-22, discusses technical and implementation implications with regards to VM-22 (including comparison with New York Regulation 213), and considers future revisions.