Description: From 2000 Valuation Actuary Symposium Panel discussion which provides an overview of the current uses of reinsurance, focusing on recent developments and issues. Panelists discussed application of reinsurance to specific products and lines of business and its use as a financial management tool in: • Term insurance • Mortality stabilization • Earnings volatility stabilization • Variable life and annuities and other investment-oriented products Generally Accepted Accounting Principles GAAP treatment of reinsurance e.g., FAS 113 and due diligence issues in selecting reinsurers and maintaining reinsurance arrangements is also discussed. Finally, panelists discussed advantages of onshore and offshore reinsurance transactions.

Description: From an interactive forum session at the 2001 Valuation Actuary Symposium, held in Lake Buena Vista, Florida, November 29-30, 2001 Discussion of the major financial reporting issues and concerns of senior actuaries in life insurance companies. Discussion focused cash flow testing methods and interpretation of results.

Description: This paper studies the statistical theory underlying minimum surplus required to protect a group insurer from the insurance, or C2, risk. Followed by 2 submitted discussion papers

Description: The creation of the short/long portfolio is the essence of the intermediation business. The result is that the efficiency of use of capital in the economy is improved, and economic growth is facilitated. From Asset-Liability Integration, M-FI02-1.

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 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 is intended to serve as a fundamental resource for a basic understanding of ERM, as well as a guide to further study of the subject. Members of the Casualty Actuarial Society have participated in the effort, as well.

Description: When fitting a model to any data, there is some uncertainty about which model is best. Green [1995] quantifies this uncertainty through the Reversible Jump Markov Chain Monte Carlo [RJMCMC] method. When using the RJMCMC method in a regime-switching situation, the chain determines the optimal number of regimes by jumping between various possibilities. This method gives each model its posterior probability of being the best. After an overview of the methodology, the authors apply it to various datasets and discuss the applications in modern actuarial science.

Description: Recently there have been several studies on the dividend payments prior to ruin in various risk models. By employing some new obtained results in the actuarial literature, this presentation analyzes the distribution of the total dividend payments in a risk model with multi-threshold dividend strategy, where the claim arrivals are modeled by a Markovian arrival process [MAP]. A piecewise integro-differential equation in matrix form is derived and solved analytically for the moments of present value of the total dividends prior to ruin. The presentation also discusses the differences between its method and other existing ones. An example with exponentially distributed claim amounts is illustrated numerically.

Description: discussion of risk management and proper pricing of life insurance products.