Description: The introduction of new gene and cell treatments is not without scrutiny. Although these treatments are often curative, they come with a significant price tag. Health plan actuaries find themselves wondering if the intended outcome supports the cost and whether the potential medical cost savings will offset the high drug cost. The Institute for Clinical and Economic Review (ICER) reviews results from clinical trials to produce a report evaluating the cost-effectiveness of new therapies. Depending on the results, the ICER report can be used by pharmaceutical companies to justify the high cost or by the health plan to do the opposite. Go beyond the ICER report and discuss an alternative method for valuing new drugs using nonmedical revenue streams, such as disability and nutrition benefits, and return-on-investment modeling. By attending this session, you will have a better understanding of the nonmedical revenue streams, such as disability and nutrition assistance benefits, that may offset the cost of a drug and how those revenue streams can be incorporated into return-on-investment modeling.

Description: Gather with members and non-members in the China actuarial community to discuss recent topics and related issues in areas such as macroeconomic sharing, pension, investment, product strategy, and more.

Description: As long-term care enters into its fifth decade, the product continues to evolve. Current trends as well as innovative product designs pose many challenges as carriers seeks to model long-term care.

Description: This is the second of a two-part article introducing and elaborating an “Adaptor” strategy for ERM. Such a strategy is intended to fulfil two purposes: first, switching among four styles of risk-coping strategies in order to track qualitative changes in a business’s risk environment; and, second, to support the business in navigating with resilience through all the seasons of a business-economic cycle, i.e., of boom, bust, moderate, uncertain. This latter requires careful study of the nature of resilience, the familiar idea of bounce back, and the less familiar idea of bounce forward. Part I of our article is underpinned therefore by a supplementary document (available from https://riskviews.wordpress.com/adaptor-exceptionalism/), which addresses the issue of structural change in a business or economy. It draws heavily on ideas taken from the discipline of control engineering, as well as some from ecology, social anthropology, and economics. The entire two-part article is thus an exercise in cross-disciplinary Systems Thinking.

Description: Regression to the mean is a phenomenon that arises when comparing sequential data points. It states that when an initial observation is extreme or an outlier, future observations will be closer to the average. Health care actuaries need to understand and be able to mitigate the effects of regression to the mean to avoid misapplying predictive models or misstating measurements of historical effects.

Description: A disscussion of actuar R, an R package for actuarial science, and its facilities in the fields of loss distribution modeling, risk theory and credibility theory.

Description: The surge in interest rates over the past few years presents opportunities for life insurers to enhance their Asset and Liability Management (ALM) positions through asset rebalancing to narrow the duration gap and secure higher risk-adjusted yields. This webcast introduces a robust, efficient and readily-executable, liability-driven strategic asset allocation (SAA) framework and implementation considerations. At the conclusion of the webcast, attendees will learn about the key objectives and practical considerations for a successful SAA.

Description: There is increasing industry interest in applying behavioral science to optimize product design decisions and improve outcomes for both insurers and their customers. With a growing set of options within product designs, predicting consumer behavior continues to get increasingly complex. Join this webcast for an overview of key behavioral economic concepts. Key insights will be shared from two SOA projects that explore how behavioral economic techniques can be used in various parts of the life insurance new business process and enforce management.

Description: We will discuss how climate change risk represents radical uncertainty and the challenges this presents in integrating climate risk analysis and traditional investment risk analysis. The session will then explain and illustrate why deterministic, narrative-based, scenarios form a suitable basis for analyzing the potential impact of climate change on investment portfolios and strategies. At the conclusion of this session, attendees will understand deterministic and stochastic approaches to integrating climate risk with economic scenarios and how these can be applied in investment management. Attendees will also understand the challenges in creating a realistic integration of climate and economic scenarios.