Description: This article describes activities of the Board of Governors to strengthen the role of research within the SOA. The Board actions include approving two additional professional staff positions for the Research Department and including $150,000 in a Research Development Fund to serve as seed money for research projects.

Description: This discussion at the 1968 Annual Meeting covers insurance company investment issues including measurement of investment performance and models for measuring perfomance.

Description: Discusses the severe adverse effects on U.S. capital markets that will occur due to the passage of FAS 115, which requires marking certain assets to market without a corresponding adjustment to liabilities.

Description: This document summarizes a meeting of the Reinsurance Section that occurred at the October 1982 Society of Actuaries annual Meeting in Washington D.C. The meeting consisted of a discussion related to the role and purpose of the section, a discussion of problems and pitfalls related to reinsurance treaties, and discussions related to choosing a reinsurer.

Description: This article is about a seminar held on October 30, 1997 to discuss mortality improvement in the NAFTA countries and the impact of such improvements on the financing and benefit adequacy of the countries’ individual social security systems. The gathering of about 80 researchers from a variety of disciplines served as a type of summit meeting on the NAFTA countries’ mortality projections. The seminar was Phase 2 of a three-phase SOA research project, 'Impact of Mortality Improvement on Social Security: Canada, Mexico, and the United States.' The project is intended to provide some guidance for appropriate governmental bodies to use in determining future financing and benefit needs for social security. It is sponsored by the SOA, The Actuarial Foundation [formerly the SOA Foundation], the Retirement Research Foundation, the American Society of Pension Actuaries, the social security administration of each NAFTA country, and the Pension Research Council.

Description: Presented at May 1996 Spring Meeting. Presents an overview of conference co-sponsored by the SOA on fair value of insurance liabilities, including a comparison of some of the methods presented. A status update of recent industry and professional activities and what the future may hold for the use of fair value of insurance liabilities in insurance company financial statements is also provided.

Description: In this paper, presented at the Eastern Spring Meeting of the Society of Actuaries, held March 24-25, 1960 in Washington, D.C., the author documents the determination of elementary functions and monetary values of the 1941 CSO Mortality Table on an age last birthday basis, noting that until this time the tables had been published only on the basis of age nearest birthday. The impetus of this change was the author’s company, Metropolitan Life, having recently started issuing ordinary life policies on an age last birthday basis, the rational being the use of age nearest birthday had led to policyholder confusion and misunderstanding. Includes discussion. From the 1960 Transactions Vol. 12, No. 33.

Description: This session is about recent population experience, likely causes, probable future prospects, Industry mortality differentials and trends by product line,market and type of underwriting, What statistically credible evidence do we have for the efficacy of life insurance underwriting practices, What does the new Intercompany Standard Issues study show and Are there sound biological laws of mortality. From Record of Society of Actuaries Vol. 5, No. 4.

Description: Article from The Actuary, November 1998 – volume 32 - Issue 9: Planning is progressing for the SOA conference “Fair Value Accounting for Insurance Companies,” March 18-19, 1999, at New York University (NYU), and some exciting new wrinkles have recently arisen.

Description: The objectives of this paper are: 1. To show why scientific laws of mortality are preferable to the continued use of graduation techniques on mortality tables. 2. To develop a new theory leading to a new mathematical law of mortality that reduces to Gompertz's law as a first approximation. 3. To demonstrate an understanding of select mortality and produce a simple formula that is reasonably consistent with it. 4. To develop methods to test this and other similar formulas on various bodies of data to establish their validity and usefulness. 5. To discuss the meaning of the results and provide some examples of the use of the formula for purposes other than graduation. 6. To discuss extensions of the models. From Transactions of Society of Actuaries 1980, Vol. 32.