Description: The Smaller Insurance Company Section Buzz Groups at the Valuation Actuary Meetings and the SOA Annual Meetings have always generated great discussions, ideas, and opportunities to hear about topics that affect the actuarial work of small companies. Join us for the Smaller Insurance Company Section Buzz Group to discuss the issues affecting Smaller (and larger) Insurance Company actuaries during these emerging changes. Bring your thoughts, opinions, ideas, and participation to discuss our special concerns.

Description: Accounting Standards Update No. 2018-12, Financial Services – Insurance (Topic 944): Targeted Improvements to the Accounting for Long-Duration Contracts (LDTI) has been effective for most large, public business entities since 2023 and will be effective for other insurers in 2025. While the guidance clarifies the need for incorporating claim liabilities and premium accrual balances in the liability for future policy benefits (LFPB) under LDTI, companies may still have questions given there are limited details available around the techniques used in practice. In this article, we demonstrate the need for incorporating claim liabilities and premium accrual balances in the LFPB under LDTI. We also look at two potential approaches of incorporating these accrual balances.

Description: This article provides an overview on one of the most budget-, resource- and time-consuming components in an insurers’ IFRS 17 implementation journey in Asia – the Subledger implementation. This article covers the key functionalities of a subledger system, as well as the important lessons learned during the implementation processes.

Description: Analyze the market volatility behavior in context with historical extreme events during this webcast. There will be a focus on understanding volatility clustering and relationships, both contemporary and temporal, in addition to key economic and capital market variables. You'll also learn from a comprehensive attribution analysis, which uses economic data, asset data, retail investor data and event data as explanatory variables. Dive into investment-related Reddit comments used to capture features of retail investors and tree-based models, including Random Forests and Gradient Boosting Machines to justify changes in volatility modeling. Expect this webcast to end with an example of liability-driven investment optimization that illustrates the potential impact of increased volatility assumption, how to adopt stochastic volatility models, how to reflect volatility clustering and return jumps.

Description: Actuarial modernization is defined as a significant step change in an organization's productivity resulting from improvements to the operating model (people, processes, and technology). As an integral part of insurance companies, actuarial departments play a crucial role in the ongoing change of the industry. This webcast will define this transformation, including who is involved, and provide examples on how it is being implemented.

Description: The session will discuss key areas of statutory reserving that contain some ambiguity or areas where there are simplifications being used in the industry. The content will be based on current practices used in the industry and possibly accompanied by an industry survey to be completed prior to the session. The focus will be heavily on CRVM, AG38, and PBR statutory frameworks and will include a Q&A portion for audience participation. Some potential topics will be reinsurance modeling, DBO3/ROP treatment, segmentation, deficiency reserves, system differences and multi-tiered designs

Description: The SOA Research Institute’s Committee on Finance Research is pleased to make available a paper that specifies general considerations to guide the development of a methodology to attribute spread to different investment risks related to AG53.

Description: Financial planning and analysis (FP&A) has become increasingly important to the life insurance industry in recent years. Insurance companies must navigate complex changes in financial reporting and capital requirements to manage risk effectively. Furthermore, technological growth has changed the landscape of the theoretical capabilities of FP&A; however, many FP&A areas struggle to implement the sophisticated modeling techniques required to manage the long-term liabilities associated with life and annuity products.

Description: Non-variable annuity principle-based reserving (PBR) VM-22 has a proposed effective date of January 1, 2026. The change in reserving standards may be impactful to annuity writers due to the transition from formulaic to principles-based reserves.

Description: A high-level review of the newly effective U.S. Actuarial Standard of Practice 56, Modeling