Description: With more than 24 years of experience in the reinsurance market, Bruno Freire is the CEO and one of the co-founders of Austral Re, along with Vinci Partners, a private equity firm. Austral Re is a Brazilian- based multiline reinsurer which that writes business across Latin America. It has grown organically throughout the last 13 years, and had its credit rating upgraded to A- in 2023 by AM Best (it also has AAAbr from S&P). Before joining Austral, Bruno had been a reinsurance broker at Aon Re for more than 10 years, having witnessed the opening of the reinsurance market in Brazil. As we will be seen in his interview the following, he believes in a data driven analytic approach, client focused but with an underwriting mindset, as well as a strong support from actuaries and technology as key instruments to run a reinsurance company successfully.

Description: The editorial board of the North American Actuarial Journal (NAAJ) announces the recipient of the NAAJ Annual Prize for the best paper published in 2023, “The Economic Impact of Extreme Cyber Risk Scenarios,” coauthored by Martin Eling, Mauro Elvedi, and Dr. Greg Falco. The NAAJ is the scholarly journal of the Society of Actuaries (SOA).

Description: Hear a summary of the discussion from the Health Section's Pharmacy Partnership Forum in March 2023 entitled 'Reimagining Pharmacy Financing' where a multi-disciplinary group of clinicians, health economists, academics, and actuaries met and discussed the following questions: How do we define the value of prescription drugs? How do we measure the value of prescription drugs? How do we scalably and meaningfully apply the answers?

Description: Python has become the fastest-growing major programming language in the world. It has surged in popularity over the last decade, following the development of its industry-leading capabilities in data science, machine learning and artificial intelligence, and it is now one of the most globally popular and widely used languages. In this article, I discuss some of the reasons for its popularity and explain why many actuaries and insurers have started using Python.

Description: The panel will discuss several product challenges including modeling hybrid/combo long-term care products, modeling benefit options that are difficult to model using deterministic methods, modeling current situs of care versus original situs of care, monitoring assumptions, streamlining experience studies within the Long-duration Targeted Improvements (LDTI) framework, and model decision making with limited credible data. The panel will then move into solutions observed to address some of the aforementioned challenges and the future of long-term care modelling

Description: Actuarial funding of OPEB plans is primarily a public sector phenomenon due to the different regulations and tax laws that impact private sector organizations in the US. OPEB funding started to gain momentum with the implementation of GASB Statement 45 in the mid to late 2000s.

Description: Join us as we summarize the impacts of recent studies from 2022, which update individual disability incidence rates and analyze the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Also, we will look at expectations for the disability insurance market. By attending this session, attendees will: - Identify the impact of recent experience adjustments to incidence rates. - Understand the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on disability coverage. - Discover emerging issues likely to influence disability coverage in upcoming years.

Description: "Driving Longevity Through Educational Attainment – Robert L. Brown – Ph. D. Higher Age U.S. Mortality By Education and Cause of Death Trends, Inequality and Controllable Risk Factors – Andrew J. G. Cairns – MPA Ph.D., Maxwell Institute for Mathematical Sciences, and Department of Actuarial Mathematics and Statistics, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK, Cristian Redondo Lour´es, Ph.D., Actuarial Solutions,"

Description: An introduction to the methods and parameters for Bayesian Hyperparameter Optimization in a Life Insurance context.

Description: Article presents a potential role for pension actuaries to help assess the effectiveness of defined contribution plans.