Description: Discusses how companies must ensure that significant and necessary product development, and administrative and compliance system changes, have been completed and tested in time to accommodate new requirements.

Description: Essay of using microeconomics and Embedded Value concepts to evaluate direct marketing programs.

Description: This is the third and final installment of an article about using microeconomics and the concepts of embedded value to better manage and understand the profitability of direct marketing programs. The article illustrates how traditional asset share calculations are not appropriate in this case.

Description: This article is a call to participate in industry mortality studies.

Description: discussion of arbitrage possibilities cause by inconsistent mortality pricing assumptions in annuity products vis. a vis. life insurance products

Description: This article gives the highlights of the 88-page report including detailed assumptions for products including universal life with secondary guarantees (ULSG), cash accumulation universal life (CashAccum), current assumption universal life (CAUL), indexed universal life (IUL) and variable universal life (VUL). The 29 companies and 83 products represented in the report allow for an interesting perspective on premium persistency assumptions used in pricing, cash flow testing (CFT) and generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP)/international financial reporting standard (IFRS) functions. This article covers some general results and ULSG-specific results.

Description: Mandatory implementation of life principle-based reserves (PBR) is just around the corner and there is no shortage of work to do, as most products have yet to be moved to PBR. Oliver Wyman recently completed its 2019 PBR survey, with more than 40 participants covering 85 percent of the individual life market, including 23 of the top 25 life writers and five reinsurers. This article will expand on the key survey findings, including implementation trends, analysis to date and recent discussions and decisions on the treatment of non-guaranteed reinsurance.

Description: This article reports on a presentation given at the SOA Annual Meeting in October 2014 (Session #43). The presentation, entitled the “Current State of the COLI/BOLI Market”, addressed current developments and issued related to the Corporate-Owned Life Insurance (COLI) and Bank-Owned Life Insurance (BOLI) markets. The Greg Brandner from Munich Re served as moderator, and he along with Julie Decker from RGA and Kelly Rabin from Milliman were the speakers.

Description: The embattled life insurance industry in Australia needs to come to terms with a new environment of heightened claims volumes, unprecedented losses, changing distribution models and even reduced benefits. Like the mythological phoenix that spectacularly regenerates from its ashes every century, Australia’s life insurance industry needs something special to rise from its ashes. Claims management innovation promises to give the necessary impetus for a market that is desperate for some good news, whilst laying the foundation for a claims revolution worldwide.

Description: Feature article discussing what it means to be market-consistent and whether or not insurance products can be priced and valued in a market-consistent fashion. This article addresses the limits to market consistency by questioning whether there in fact can be a market-consistent level annual premium for a term life insurance contract.