Description: "Most patients enter the health care system through their primary care provider or through the Emergency Room or an Urgent Care Center. How an emergency room is structured, managed, and provides care is one of the major forces impacting the total cost of care. Yet it is often an after-thought and ignored by both health plans and health systems. In reality, the structured introduction of efficient practices can substantially reduce the quantity and cost of health care services. Further explore useful information to better understand and see how there are still substantial opportunities for improvement."

Description: The SOA Research Institute seeks proposals and essays on actuarial aspects of 401(k) plans, including similar plans like 403(b) and 457. Topics include investment impact, participant behavior, plan features, and AI's role. Submissions aim to enhance understanding and future research on retirement savings adequacy and system improvements.

Description: This article outlines how Bermuda advanced in global tax compliance through the enactment of the Bermuda Corporate Income Tax (CIT) Act of 2023, which will take effect for tax years beginning on or after January 1, 2025. The Bermuda CIT rules incorporate key foundational definitions from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s (OECD) Pillar Two GloBE model rules, while also exhibiting significant differences from Pillar Two. The article discusses the various elections available for taxpayers, key mechanics of the CIT, and the latest administrative guidance released by the Government of Bermuda.

Description: FASB published LTDI requirements in 2018. The effective date for insurers who are SEC filers to publish US GAAP financials under LDTI is January 1, 2023. The effective date for non-public insurers is January 1, 2025. LDTI requires insurers to identify a new category of benefits called market risk benefits (MRBs) in insurance products. Broadly, variable annuity (VA) and fixed indexed annuity (FIA) guaranteed minimum death, accumulation, withdrawal, and income benefits fall under MRBs. Valuing MRBs requires calculating the liability on a fair value basis. Valuing FIA MRBs on a fair value basis can be complicated as several aspects of FIAs such as option budgets and policyholder behavior are driven by company management decisions and the competitive landscape.

Description: Next up for Principle-Based Reserves (PBR) is VM-22, PBR for non-variable annuities. With Field Testing underway, companies are beginning to understand the impacts on financial statements, as well as actuarial models, processes, and people. This session will focus on the implications VM-22 will have on companies, including initial lessons learned from the early phases of field testing, actuarial modeling considerations, implementation considerations, and strategic implications - including hedging and reinsurance. At the conclusion of this session attendees will be able to: 1. Explain VM-22 2. Understand initial lessons learned from field testing 3. Identify changes required to actuarial models as a result of VM-22 4. Understand the initial strategic implications of VM-22

Description: Actuaries can leverage cluster modeling to reduce model runtime and cloud compute costs, which can be a real concern as companies transition from an on-premise grid to a scalable cloud solution. We consider practical considerations associated with clustering, through both US statutory and US GAAP lenses. Lastly, the results from a variable annuity liability clustering case study are presented.

Description: The Taxing Times Editorial Board acknowledges the invaluable contributions of our colleague, Art Schneider, who passed away in August. Throughout his career as a tax accountant, Art generously shared his time and talents to help actuaries and other tax professionals increase their understanding of insurance industry tax topics. We will miss him.

Description: A description and status update on all recent research reports sponsored by the Financial Reporting Section.

Description: Explore real-life experiences implementing LDTI for traditional life and annuity products. Learn about strategies that worked well and pitfalls to avoid in the future. Topics include data and assumption management, building disclosures for attribution analyses and roll-forwards, discount rates, implementing new DAC calculations, reinsurance accounting methods, and risk-neutral ESGs and processes to calculate Market Risk Benefits.

Description: This is a request for data contributions for a study on term conversion incidence and post-conversion mortality and lapse experience from 2009 to 2023. It outlines the purpose, scope, and process of the study, data submission requirements, study results, benefits to participants, and data access and ownership details.