Description: Panelists discuss the results of a survey of 59 responding companies about their student programs, how their own student programs are evolving with the changing actuarial-exam structure [with the Flexible Education System, FES, and the Future Education Methods, FEM], and how student programs might continue to change as the needs for actuaries evolve. Many questions and comments from the audience. From the 1988 Record of Society of Actuaries, Vol. 14, No. 2.

Description: 1993 SOA Annual Meeting in New York. This session is about risk-appraisal techniques for the 21st century. Topics Include: 1. Some approaches that companies take and some issues that companies face in establishing preferred-risk underwriting programs. 2. Marketing, product design, and underwriting considerations for joint and second-to-die life insurance products. 3. Establishing assumptions for preferred-risk programs as well as some of the marketplace issues that need to be considered. 4. Expert underwriting systems. 5. The need for consistency in underwriting. 6. Developing trends in testing techniques and how those trends can be utilized in the underwriting process.

Description: Some insurance products on the market today accelerate the death benefit by paying a portion of the benefit before death under certain prescribed conditions. The more common of these products are long-term-care and dread disease riders to life policies. This paper presents generic formulas for calculating the cost of morbidity that would be multiplied by the policy's net amount at risk in an asset share pricing calculation. From Transactions of Society of Actuaries 1990, Vol. 42.

Description: The panel examined the trend of a large proportion of new and in-force business being ceded by direct-writing companies into the reinsurance marketplace. Questions addressed: 1. Is there a difference of opinion on mortality assumptions between the reinsurer and the direct writer? If so, who's right? 2. If the reinsurer is right, what are the implications to the direct writer? 3. If the direct writer is right, what are the implications to the reinsurer? 4. Are there other driving forces behind the large amounts being ceded?

Description: One way to reduce a catastrophe’s effects is to buy traditional catastrophe coverage. Another is to participate in a catastrophe pool Special Pooled Risk.

Description: Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) are reshaping the insurance industry landscape. Some M&A transactions even garner wide media coverage. The presenters discuss current trends in recent M&A transactions and explore considerations for buyers and sellers leading up to the transactions.

Description: Full version of Reinsurance Section News, June 2002, Issue No. 50.