Description: This article presents highlights from a Roundtable Discussion held at the 2008 Annual Conference of the National Academy of Social Insurance - NASI. Some issues discussed are the results of the SOA 2007 Survey on the Risks and Process of Retirement, the phases of retirement and the changes during retirement as a function of changing health and capability, age, changing family status and employment status.

Description: Delve into the factors contributing to the rapid growth of high-cost medical treatments and how payers can manage the financial exposure that comes with them. Learn about the current and near-future state of million-dollar medical costs, as well as the trends shaping the industry. By attending the session, you will have a better understanding of the underlying drivers of high-cost treatments and will be equipped with practical strategies for mitigating their financial impact, including risk management techniques, cost containment measures, and new payment models. Additionally, you will be able to identify key considerations for implementing these strategies in their own organizations.

Description: Interest rates steadily declining ever since the Volcker Fed tackled inflation in the early eighties. Ten years of stimulating monetary policy brought new lows. We should have braced ourselves for a return to neutrality, but that concept remains elusive. We will explore structural issues that have brought rates to these low levels and the potential impacts on the insurance business.

Description: Overview on current trends in medical practice impacting the LTC insurance business with a focus on dementia, risk stratification, and predictive modeling.

Description: This session from the 1982 SOA Spring Meeting discusses the recent economic environment, the changes in household economic activity, the effect of the continued high rate of inflation on the needs and responses of customers of financial security products and participants of non-insured employee benefit plans during their working years. From Record of the Society of Actuaries 1982, Volume 8, No. 1.

Description: This session discussion is about two proposals for health-care reform will be presented, one from the Blue Cross/Blue Shield Association and one from the Council for Affordable Health Care. These dramatically different proposals will be compared and open for critique. From Record of Society of Actuaries Vol. 18, No. 4A.

Description: This session from the 1995 SOA New Orleans Meeting reviews trends in savings products including the Index Annuity, the CD annuity, variable life, variable annuities, modified endowment contracts - MEC and shifts in the banking industry. From the Record of the Society of Actuaries, Vol. 21, No. 1.

Description: Health care is a complex market with a wide variety of stakeholders. These stakeholders have diverse business needs, requiring complicated data-driven decisions. The analytics and research supporting these decisions are often dependent on the availability of real-world data (RWD), which includes a wide variety of data capture technology and data reflecting treatment, clinical outcomes, and costs of health care in real treatment settings (e.g.,, outside of controlled clinical trials). The goal of this panel discussion is to explore how existing and emerging sources of RWD can enhance benefit design, improve risk assessment, influence treatment decisions, and advance the measurement of clinical, humanistic, and financial outcomes. The diverse speaker panel includes actuarial and non-actuarial perspectives, representing the pharmaceutical industry, a health-care services business, and academia. The panel will describe the decision-making that drives their individual needs to use RWD, identify current and developing RWD sources, provide examples of analyses using RWD, and discuss how emerging RWD may influence actuarial analytics and potentiate the development of new interdisciplinary methods and value drivers.

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: Numerous behavioral finance theories have emerged in recent years, many of which apply to insurance. The presenters look at key theories and their use in explaining, predicting and inducing behavior from the perspective of the health insurance customer journey.