Description: Milliman, Inc. Milliman was retained by the Society of Actuaries SOA to perform certain actuarial analyses with respect to the Z-Factor methodology under a principles-based approach PBA to statutory reserve and capital. Under PBA, the Z-Factor is a measure of margin in excess of the best estimate assumptions embedded in the statutory reserves of a life insurance product or block of business.

Description: Life and annuity markets around the world have seen increasingly complex investment-combined products, including universal life, fixed indexed annuities, variable annuities with a wide variety of guaranteed benefits and indexed variable annuities. Insurance companies are facing unprecedented exposure to financial risks in addition to traditional mortality and longevity risks. The risk assessment and modeling for such complex designs by conventional methods often focus heavily on their market competitiveness and profitability. However, there seems to be a lack of quantifiable and systematic approaches to assess investment risks associated with investment combined products. The objective of the proposed work is to develop a framework for quantifying and analyzing various forms of contractual designs and showcase different techniques to assess the trade-off between competitive contractual designs and their practical implications regarding the difficulty of risk management.

Description: February 2010 Supplement to the Taxation Section newsletter, Taxing Times. Extensive discussion of the issues in computing statutory and tax reserves for annuities under VA CARVM.

Description: A discussion of the growing popularity of annuities with guaranteed minimum income benefits GMIB during times of bear markets and some related discussion of product features, minimum statutory reserves and capital requirements for the product

Description: This article analyzes two common interpretations of SOP 03-1 in determining the guaranteed minimum death benefit GMDB liability in a variable annuity contract, and it analyzes the resulting impact on the initial GMDB reserve and on the volatility of GAAP earnings as actual experience emerges. This analysis could be applied to the guaranteed minimum income benefit GMIB, guaranteed minimum accumulation benefit GMAB, guaranteed minimum withdrawal benefit GMWB and other guaranteed benefits in a variable annuity contract that are subject to SOP 03-1, and the conclusions would be similar.

Description: Perspectives on the Valuation Manual.

Description: Feature article from the newsletter Product Matters discussing variable annuities and principle-based approaches to reserve and capital requirements.

Description: A discussion of risk based capital for annuities RBC C-3 Phase II

Description: After nearly a decade of work by ACLI and representatives of its member companies, the Society of Actuaries SOA, the American Academy of Actuaries Academy, and the NAIC’s Life and Health Actuarial Task Force LHATF, on Sept. 24, 2008, the NAIC adopted a new actuarial guideline for applying the method of computing statutory reserves for variable annuity contracts AG VACARVM.

Description: Presented at Living to 100 Symposium, January 2011. This paper examines the trends of mortality improvement in the United States for the consideration of the task force set up in 2010 to review the life tables for Group Annuity and the related assumptions for mortality improvement 'Scale AA', using more recent information from the Social Security Administration life tables and data derived from the Human Mortality Database.