Description: The editorial explores the reasons for the current low interest rates and introduces the February/March 2016 issue of The Actuary in which experts offer strategies on how to cope with the complex issues facing insurance companies and investment actuaries.

Description: This article highlights several innovative ideas in the LTC insurance industry that were discussed at the 2016 ILTCI Conference, including: LifeStage LTC, insurance linked to wearable devices, repackaging existing LTC, retirement accounts, and "uberfication" of home health care.

Description: In the process of getting credentialed, there are more important things than a passing score. Life is not about numbers but transferable behaviors.

Description: How the philosophy of Siddhartha (think, fast, and wait) applies to the business world today.

Description: Details of a donation to the SOA library that consists of books from the library of the first American actuary, Charles Gill.

Description: Increasing uncertainties and volatility in financial as well as real goods markets increasingly reveal that controlling systems based on deterministic and pseudo-exact values are insufficiently eligible to manage the business activities. This raises the question how management systems can be modified to generate the adequate management impulses in volatile periods. Risk management deals from identifying, evaluating and aggregating chances and risks, which again determine the potential fluctuation range of relevant performance indicators. Everyday corporate life shows that risk management is considered important; but the corresponding processes to identify, evaluate and report chances and risks are seldom part of established decision criteria. This “paradox” lets assume that risks are managed in various differing and unsystematic ways. The combination of traditional controlling methods and risk management is not primarily a methodological challenge. The behavior of the whole organization, practiced over a long-year period, has to be transferred into a new corporate culture of transparent dealing with chances and risks. This paper describes the necessary change management process, which has to come along with necessary methodological modifications.

Description: Retirement readiness planning is difficult because the value of a person's future Social Security benefits is uncertain, given the need for reform.

Description: Essay suggesting to fix the tax code, reform healthcare regulations, open the industry to competition and reform malpractice litigation.

Description: In this essay, we focus on the “Prospective Solvency Assessment” aspect of the NAIC’s ORSA. This places a spotlight on an insurer’s strategic decision making from a risk and capital management perspective. It requires those in senior management to describe actions they would take to address possible adverse changes in their risk and solvency position, i.e., what they would do to reduce risk, increase capital, and/or adjust the business strategy. We contend that by applying a slightly broader scope than the specific requirements of the NAIC’s ORSA, insurers can develop this into a valuable process to support risk-based decision making. In this essay, we initially consider how to determine which metrics to include in such a process and then discuss some important business requirements and practical challenges for implementing a calculation approach to support it. Part of the essay collection "Risk Metrics for Decision Making and ORSA"

Description: This article is about the most significant issues and trends that may impact long-term care LTC risks, care delivery and protection in the future.