Description: Feature article discussing the variable annuity industry rebuilding and reinventing itself.

Description: This paper first derives the fair participation rate based on a fair value of the equity-indexed annuity EIA. Then using risk measures, a new participation rate is obtained, based on the tail loading of the hedging error distribution. Risk management strategies reducing risk related to the hedging error are also presented. A detailed numerical analysis is performed for a point-to-point EIA.

Description: This presentation from the Actuarial Research Conference of 2006 is an overview of Guaranteed Minimum Withdrawal Benefits. It briefly discusses pricing.

Description: This abstract describes a paper that analyzes the sample size effects on the estimation of the beta.

Description: This is a discussion from the 1982 SOA Spring Meeting on individual annuity product design under conditions of inflation. It highlights the design and testing of annuity products in an inflationary envirnonmnet, the marketing and distribution of annuities, the importance of asset/liability matching and surplus and valuation considerations. From Record of the Society of Actuaries 1982, Volume 8, No. 1.

Description: This paper investigates the use of models of dependent mortality for determining annuity values. We discuss a broad class of parametric models using a bivariate survivorship function called a copula. Using data from a large insurance company to illustrate our methods, we calculate maximum likelihood estimates to calibrate the rnodel.

Description: We propose an age-shift model to modify the LC model and deal with the problem of parameters. The proposed method attains smaller estimation errors with respect to mean absolute percentage error or mean square error. We also apply the proposed age-shift model to the mortality rates of these four countries to evaluate the longevity risk in annuity products by measuring life expectancy.

Description: Life and annuity markets around the world have seen increasingly complex investment-combined products, including universal life, fixed indexed annuities, variable annuities with a wide variety of guaranteed benefits and indexed variable annuities. Insurance companies are facing unprecedented exposure to financial risks in addition to traditional mortality and longevity risks. The risk assessment and modeling for such complex designs by conventional methods often focus heavily on their market competitiveness and profitability. However, there seems to be a lack of quantifiable and systematic approaches to assess investment risks associated with investment combined products. The objective of the proposed work is to develop a framework for quantifying and analyzing various forms of contractual designs and showcase different techniques to assess the trade-off between competitive contractual designs and their practical implications regarding the difficulty of risk management.

Description: Presented at May 1996 Spring Meeting. This session offers a retrospective and prospective look at the development of actuarial pricing models and technology tools.

Description: This panel discussion focuses on expense analysis and allocation. Areas addressed include standard of measure used, inconsistencies in expense allocations, and alternate methods of allocation of marketing expenses.