Description: An overview of the basic tooling and packages available for the Julia programming language, with a focus on why this is of interest to the actuarial profession. It covers some of the built-in language features as well parts of the Julia package ecosystem that make Julia ideal for modeling and data analysis. This is the second installment in a series of article aimed at actuaries. The first installment, Julia for Actuaries, was published in the October 2020 edition of Actuarial Technology Today, and covered the base language itself, its high-level, math-friendly syntax, and why the actuary of the future should consider its adoption.

Description: Congress authorized the creation of the RAISE Family Caregiving Advisory Council in 2018. The Council, comprised of family caregivers and experts from a wide variety of stakeholder organizations in both the private and public sector, have been engaged in an in-depth research effort over the last two years to develop recommendations and an implementation plan to address our national caregiving crisis. This article describes their work and the newly released Report to Congress.

Description: Discussion of how to mature value-based contracts between health insurers and provider organizations to improve population health and financial sustainability. Centers around contract parameter consistency, revenue predictability and risk assessment. Intended audience are health plan and ACO actuaries and leaders. Authors are writing from the provider perspective in value-based contracts.

Description: Current tax issues affecting the insurance industry, including the Inflation Reduction Act (Budget Reconciliation Bill)'s tax provisions, including the corporate minimum book income tax and share repurchase (or stock buyback) excise tax; the tax treatment of non coordinated benefits (also known as fixed indemnity benefits); and an update on the OECD’s Base Erosion and Profit Shifting Project

Description: This paper applies the research in Prospect Theory of Kahneman and Tversky to explain why sales of annuities lag sales of life insurance products. The author theorizes that life insurance is easier to sell because customers perceive themselves to be in the domain of losses, while potential annuity customers perceive themselves to be in the domain of gains. Kahneman and Tversky showed us that people are mostly risk averse in the domain of gains and risk seeking in the domain of losses. Purchase of an annuity or life product is a risky investment. Customers will find it easier to take the risk in the life insurance domain of losses than the annuity domain of gains. The author then proposes a hybrid life annuity product that might address both mortality and longevity risk in one product that would allow both products to be more competitive than stand-alone products.

Description: A look at the near future and far future of various elements of Actuarial Models as defined through ASOP 51. What is driving the complexity for inputs, calculations, and outputs. Howe will actuaries handle these challenge?

Description: First from a comparison of U.S. and Japanese interest rates, abrupt switch to sumo, because sumo is life! Okay, it is not -- in March 2022, there was an upset win when a tall but li wrestler won the tournament. Just as in sumo, when it's not the more massive man who wins, we need to question our assumptions in our models.

Description: Actuaries are currently familiar with the impact of new technologies used primarily by clinicians and health care providers, such as new drugs and devices. The common theme emerging from many of the articles points to a technological revolution in health care accelerated by the COVID-19 crisis this year. Actuaries need to understand these technologies, their impact, learn how to drive this technological change and guide the response of their profession and their own health care organizations.

Description: COVID19 highlights the need for greater complexity expertise in risk management. Crisis like the current COVID19 pandemic and 2008 Financial meltdown and others help us to turn into focus inwards for introspection on how we can better manage our resources and provide a deeper understanding of what our objectives should be and how we can achieve them through applying complexity science.

Description: The traditional defined-benefit (DB) plan is a type of plan structured to provide the greatest degree of retirement income security, designed to pay out a guaranteed retirement income for the life of the retiree (and, when applicable, a beneficiary). However, over the last several decades, the number of private-sector employees covered under these traditional plans has decreased dramatically and been replaced by defined contribution (DC) plans. In contrast, public-sector retirement plans, which are exempt from ERISA, have seen a much smaller decline in DB plans. There are many differences in the private and public sector that likely contributed to this phenomenon, but ERISA and the many amendments to it has been a major factor.