Description: 2004 SOA Spring Meeting, Anaheim, CA. This session was about various alternative skills that actuaries might need such as business acumen, communication skills, asset knowledge, knowledge of broader financial markets, and knowledge of corporate operations.

Description: This session covers the economic principles of “buffet pricing” and whether such pricing can be used for health care. Presented is an argument in favor of “all you can eat” pricing of health care where consumers pay a fixed fee and have no constraints on consumption. From the Record of the Society of Actuaries, Volume 27, No. 1, Session 118

Description: The upside of the downturn is that these powerful, influential, connected and important, yet incompetent people can be removed from their positions. To quote a great insight of Ayn Rand: “There is no substitute for competence.”

Description: This is an article about the lack of savings by the baby boomers and how it will affect retirement and the ramifications for Social Security. The author believes that baby boomers will choose to continue to work and alleviate some of the burden on social security.

Description: Discusses the reasons for, and the economic impacts of, the backdating of life insurance policies, and what changes in the industry might evolve to address them.

Description: In this session at the SOA 2003 Washington, DC Spring Meeting, the panelists discuss the value of deferred taxes to the owner of an IRA, 401k or similar product. The time it takes for tax-deferral benefits to overcome typical penalties levied on early distributions is reviewed. They also discuss the effect of tax deferral on the risk profile of investments.

Description: This paper asks the Modligliani-Miller question regarding the mortgage markets. The paper is essentially about the genesis of the credit crisis. The proposed answer is that the practice of risk should not be allowed without actuarial supervision.

Description: Part 5 addresses various purposes for measuring a public sector pension liability and which measures have the most practical usefulness.

Description: Part 1 proposes solutions to the first of three flaws of the current financial model to obtaining the fair value of the public sector employer’s pension benefit liability.

Description: Part 4 presents an alternate approach to obtaining the fair value of the public sector employer’s pension benefit liability.