Description: The article discusses the continued popularity of indexed UL insurance and possible reasons why a company's actual indexed UL earnings may be below their original pricing expectations for the product. The article discusses several key items that may be the source of that underperformance (e.g., hedge ineffectiveness, policyholder behavior) and the need to monitor earnings and perform analyses to better understand those potential sources.

Description: This article is historical in nature and explores the impacts of traditional life insurance products offering cash surrender values. This article intended to show that by offering cash surrender value, insurance companies became less exposed to the risk of mis-estimated lapse assumptions. This article presents an illustrative case study to highlight this dynamic. This article also explores the issues with traditional life insurance products that arose in the 1970s and 1980 and led to the introduction of Universal Life in the U.S.

Description: Whole life insurance nonforfeiture options may be actuarially equivalent at the time premium payments end. When the entire remaining lifetime of the policy is fully considered; however, significant differences emerge in expenses between paying the cash surrender value, converting to reduced paid-up, or converting to extended term insurance. This article explores how a company might manage its existing nonforfeiture options and consider what to continue to offer after a product refiling with that entire lifetime in mind.

Description: Critical illness insurance is a popular supplemental health insurance product in the U.S. market. This article discusses how carriers have recently sought to add value by expanded the benefits offered in their critical illness products. Specifically, the article discusses the consumer need and development considerations of adding benefits for autism Spectrum Disorder, Mental health disorders, Specified Disease Coverage, and enhance Cancer Coverage to a critical illness contract.

Description: This article highlights emerging accelerated underwriting (AUW) monitoring trends and best practices that carriers can implement for monitoring their own AUW programs. It includes high-level mortality slippage findings based on a reinsured study population comprised of both pre- and post-issue auditing methods (random holdouts and post-issue audits) conducted on over 33,000 AUW applicants over the past decade.

Description: A paper demonstrating how to obviate the need for market timing strategies in variable annuity products by judicious use of product design. The paper presents the premise behind the product design, provides numerical examples, then explores possible extensions of the concept to produce more sophisticated variable annuity plans based on guarantees of investment outcomes.

Description: An overview of Electronic Health Records and how they will enhance risk assessment and automated underwriting in the US.

Description: A look back over 20 years to see how product topics of the day have changed and remained the same.

Description: Accelerated underwriting expert, Ryan Holt, FSA, gives a brief history of the confusion matrix and how its use came into the accelerated underwriting space. An in depth discussion of estimating mortality impact using underwriting audits follows. Three key assumptions that effect mortality impact are discussed. Readers will leave with an understanding of how to estimate mortality impacts using audit results from any new under writing program as well as the considerations that should be taken around key assumptions. Background articles are provided for readers that are less familiar with the subject matter.

Description: Description of the mathematics involved when looking at low probability events within a company from the perspective of the C-Suite. The accumulation of small probability events leads to a much higher probability of at least one of them happening in a given period.