Description: This monograph strives to define a mission for the modern insurance industry, its place in the financial intermediation network, and the role of Asset/Liability Management in that mission from the perspective of what is known about capital markets and practiced in financial engineering.

Description: This paper reviews the main methodological questions underlying the theoretical pricing of catastrophe insurance futures. From Securitization of Insurance Risk: The 1995 Bowles Symposium, M-FI978-1.

Description: This paper examines how the cash balance plan design is related to the normal cost and accrued liability in the various actuarial cost methods, as well as the interaction of the economic assumptions in the valuation. The analysis will show that the traditional cost methods may understate the actual liability. The paper also presents an alternative cost method, along with its advantages and disadvantages. From Cash Balance Symposium Monograph, M-RS02-3.

Description: This paper suggests that two opposing pressures are at work in the United States. One is the limit to the number of retired adults that the nation can support. The other is the growing diversity of needs and desires of older people and employers. These two opposing pressures will frame the issues of the future.

Description: This paper examines the problem of a growing net benefit reduction for working women who are entitled to benefits in their own right, as well as to benefits as surviving spouses of covered workers.

Description: This paper suggests a number of legislative changes, educational efforts, and changes in annuity products and asset allocation software that could assist workers and retirees to better prepare for and respond to declining mortality rates and future increases in income needs. From Retirement Needs Framework, M-RS00-1.

Description: This paper provides some background about demography, health and retirement summarizes how current pension laws influence the design of pension plans and the timing of retirement and looks at the optimal retirement age from the perspective of employers, government and workers.

Description: This paper takes the position that the U.K. actuarial profession has still not come to a single view on financial economics, and the major divisions that remain continue to hamstring its policy development. From Current Pension Actuarial Practice in Light of Financial Economics Symposium, M-RS04-1.

Description: This paper presents an approach to analyzing continuing care retirement community CCRC data and demonstrates the methodology by using data from a CCRC. From The Old-Age Crisis - Actuarial Opportunities - The 1996 Bowles Symposium, M-RS99-1.

Description: This paper discusses and reaches the conclusion that baby-boomers and younger workers need to be told that their Social Security benefits will be substantially less adequate than those of today's retirees, and that they need to know now so that they have time to take appropriate actions to have more retirement income available from other sources. From The Old-Age Crisis - Actuarial Opportunities - The 1996 Bowles Symposium, M-RS99-1.