Description: Come hear an update on Product Development Section activities with a special highlight on current hot topics. This breakfast is open to all meeting attendees free of charge. If you plan to attend, you must register in advance.

Description: The cloud inspires awe and fear in equal parts these days. There is a need to learn more, but there’s much information to learn and it may be difficult to know what to learn next. In this session, we’ll carve off a small corner of the cloud and make it your own. Setting up a Data Science Virtual Machine on Digital Ocean will be demonstrated. It’s the fastest way to get a data science development environment setup for your own use. Many of the topics and ideas covered will apply to almost all other cloud offerings. What use cases Digital Ocean is good for, and what use cases you should look elsewhere for, will also be discussed.

Description: Understanding changing market conditions and various regulatory regimes is important to maximize shareholder value through the use of efficient capital. This session will educate on the solvency requirements for Bermuda, U.S., Canada and the European Union and highlight key differences among the four regimes. The presenters will compare the Total Balance Sheet Requirements for the four jurisdictions for a block of long-duration insurance contracts. The focus will be to compare and contrast the solvency requirements:

Description: The academy generator is widely applied in actuarial practice. Initially confined to regulatory reserving, companies are increasingly using the AAA/SOA generator over an ever widening range of applications testing the limits of the academy generator's intended function. The session will give a brief overview of the academy generator and the asset classes it can be used to model. It will also analyze the statistical properties of the academy scenarios and discuss the scenarios relative to standard validation criterion. Some of the challenges that actuaries face in using this framework will be reviewed and options for addressing these challenges will be offered.

Description: This 1981 session focused on issues related to term life insurance. Topics included 1. Term life insurance products in the 1980's 2. Assumptions and experience 3. Term insurance marketing and distribution including sales compensation approaches.

Description: Today's actuarial teams dedicate substantial time and resources to maintain strong frameworks for risk management and control. Current practices typically endure this as a sunken cost, yielding minimal value beyond SOX/MAR/COSO compliance and basic error prevention. With a small up-front time investment, and a willingness to approach these activities with an open mind, the functionality of existing compliance activities can be completely transformed. Compliance activities, once a sunken time cost, can be elevated to deliver more insightful analysis to stakeholders.

Description: Baseline and what-if/stressed projections of cash flows, financial statements and capital requirements are critical inputs to a range of business purposes, including forecasts, risk management, liquidity management, strategic decision making, etc. Forward looking projections have historically been inefficient and performed in silos making it difficult to scale the process as CFOs and CROs ask for more. In this session we discuss challenges of the forecast process and opportunities to meet desired future capabilities. We will also discuss “what-if” analysis and ways to support production of forward looking projections for “what-if” analysis in an efficient way.

Description: Certain valuation assumptions are difficult to set with a high degree of accuracy, whether because the underlying experience is in different economic or interest rate environments, in addition to other reasons. Examples include assumptions for long-term care insurance, annuity options, lapsation and premium persistency on ULSG. This session will share how the actuary can use predictive analytics to augment the assumption-setting process. Some of the benefits to the actuary (along with the company and the regulator) include more accurate assumptions with lower margins for adverse deviations. Of possible interest as well is that applications go beyond valuation and include acquisitions, reinsurance and pricing.

Description: This session will cover lessons learned during the course of implementing PBR by the panelists. It will focus on areas that were difficult to interpret, unexpected issues and managing the process. It will focus on potential stumbling blocks from an implementation, pricing and product development standpoint. There will also be an overview of YRT treatment to date and an update on any emerging best practices.

Description: Overview and history of the Centers of Academic Excellence (CAE) program, created with the goal to enhance actuarial knowledge and expand the profession’s influence in academia.