July 6 - Individual Life Experience Committee Research - An Update

View Session

Overview

---

Members of the ILEC will provide an update on the latest research sponsored by the committee. This research will include updates on the latest mortality and lapse experience study research, reviews of various analytical approaches that the committee is exploring, as well as a discussion of the committee's plans for future research.

At the conclusion of the webcast, attendees will be able to: Understand some of the latest experience study results developed by the committee, use some new analytical techniques for exploring the ILEC data, and know what future research the committee has underway or is considering undertaking.

Speakers

---

Presenters: Philip Lance Adams, FSA, CERA, MAAA; David B. Atkinson, FSA; Kevin P. Larsen, ASA, MAAA
Moderator: Tony R. Phipps, FSA, MAAA

July 9 - Mortality Improvement and Company Practices

View Session

Overview

---

Recently the Society of Actuaries launched its Mortality and Longevity Strategic Research Program (MLSRP) to provide relevant industry research to inform the profession on the latest trends impacting mortality and longevity. In this webcast, presenters will provide the results of a recent MLSRP sponsored multi-country survey on mortality improvement practices of life insurance companies. Research on historical U.S. population mortality improvement, including analyses by causes of death and by county category, will be discussed.

At the conclusion of the webcast, attendees will be able to:
• Describe the goals of the SOA Mortality and Longevity Strategic Research Program
• Better understand what life insurance companies in Canada and U.S. are doing regarding their mortality improvement assumptions
• Better understand historical U.S. population mortality improvement
• Apply the results of the information presented

Speakers

---

Presenters: Jean-Marc Fix, FSA, MAAA; Allen M. Klein, FSA, MAAA; Cynthia MacDonald, FSA, MAAA
Moderator: Jean-Marc Fix, FSA, MAAA

July 10 - Predictive Analytics: The New Way to Forecast Mortality

View Session

Overview

---

The presenters will review investment trends, drivers, data sources and uses of predictive analytics and how it is transforming the life underwriting process. They will zero in on data being used (client + 3rd party), technology infrastructure requirements and modeling approaches. They will cover: predicting underwriting outcomes, building a mortality model, using the mortality model to stratify risk and predict risk classes.

At the conclusion of the webcast, attendees will:
• Be aware of the depth and breadth of predictive modeling across large and medium sized companies and the forces driving this new way to predict mortality outcomes
• Have an understanding of how a predictive-model based strategy starts with outcomes and uses modeling techniques to identify data characteristics most likely to produce those outcomes
• See that predictive analytics is not limited by what is already known and may discover new predictors of mortality

Speakers

---

Presenters: James Arthur Lynch, FSA, MAAA; Kimberly M. Steiner, FSA, MAAA; Jason L. VonBergen, FSA, MAAA
Moderator: Kimberly M. Steiner, FSA, MAAA

July 13 - Wind of Change: Industry Developments Impacting Inforce VA Business

View Session

Overview

---

The variable annuity (VA) landscape is experiencing a wave of accounting and regulatory changes resulting in companies needing to further contemplate the resulting impacts and challenges facing these VA blocks. The industry must continue to evolve to integrate NAIC reform and GAAP Long Duration Targeted Improvement (LDTI) and ultimately consider solutions, such as reinsurance, to manage the business. A panel of industry leaders across different disciplines will consider the changing environment and share their perspectives on these developments that are impacting inforce variable annuity blocks.

At the conclusion of the webcast, attendees will be able to:
• Better understand the impacts and challenges caused by GAAP LDTI related to accounting volatility, disclosure requirements and data/technology system implementations
• Better understand the impacts and challenges caused by NAIC VA reform, how companies are reacting and resetting the way VA businesses are managed related to reserving, capitalization and hedging practices
• Identify solutions, such as reinsurance, to mitigate the accounting and regulatory changes that are impacting VA blocks

Speakers

---

Presenters: Miles Robert Kaschalk, FSA; Bruce B. Rosner, FSA, MAAA,   Qunying (June) Guan, FSA
Moderator: Kelly M. Hennigan, FSA

July 16 - Insurance, Customer Experience and Millennials: Solving the Value Equation

View Session

Overview

---

This webcast will attempt to answer the question, 'What would need to happen to make life insurance bought, and not sold,' from the perspective of a millennial in the insurance industry. The presenters will discuss the potential reasons why millennials have insurance gaps, while focusing on the salience of insurance value. Through this examination, they will review a few possible ways for life insurers to increase their reach by offering it as a value creator for financially savvy millennials.

At the conclusion of the webcast, attendees will be able to:
• Identify potential barriers to millennial insurance purchases
• Evaluate what could be done to make their products more appealing to millennials
• Create value salience in the marketplace

Speakers

---

Presenters: Nathan James Bernardi, FSA, CERA; Emily Jeanne Lorentzen, FSA, MAAA; David Mamane, FCAS, FCIA
Moderator: Nathan James Bernardi, FSA, CERA

July 17 - Financial Planning Issues Facing Women: Longer Lives = Bigger Burdens

View Session

Overview

---

In this webcast, the presenters will discuss the unique financial challenges women face that impact their retirement security. The presentation will cover a range of financial and life challenges specific to women, including: longer longevity, higher medical expenses, the 'pink tax', investing preferences and risk tolerance, lower earned income and savings (especially during child rearing years when it is most important) and more.

This webcast will also cover how various life, annuity, and investment products may best address these challenges for women specifically (or any investor with a similar profile). We will cover each of these topics with an actuarial perspective, driven by raw data, and through the lens of real life stories from financial advisors' experiences.

At the conclusion of the webcast, attendees will be able to:
• Describe key financial risks arising from emerging trends in female longevity
• Describe key findings on behavioral investing trends that impact female financial security
• Understand the impact of female specific longevity, career cycle and investing behaviors on overall retirement security
• Use female specific issues in product development and marketing work for life, annuity, and investment products to offer optimal financial security for the female demographic

Speakers

---

Presenters: Sandra Gilpatrick, CFP; Suzanne Norman, CIMA, Catherine Collinson
Moderator: Maria Schiopu, ASA, MAAA

July 13 - Practical Application of Least-Squares Monte Carlo to VA Pricing

View Session

Overview

---

VA pricing requires stochastic-on-stochastic modeling to predict future reserves and capital requirements based on value at risk or conditional tail expectation. Usually brute-force simulation approach cannot accommodate the time constraint in a real business world. Least-Squares Monte Carlo (LSMC) built on predictive models such as GLM, Random Forest, and Gradient Boosting Machine, when designed appropriately, can significantly reduce model run time with a highly satisfactory accuracy.

The presenters will use a case study to introduce LSMC based VA pricing, and more importantly, discuss the challenges and practical solutions in a real business case.
• How do we construct a meaningful training data set in a short window?
• How do we select explanatory variables? How do we interpret and compare different models?
• How do we balance between time and accuracy?
• How do we determine when we need to recalibrate the models?

With a focus on the implementation side, this webcast intends to help practitioners improve and accelerate their VA pricing process. It can also be used to project reserves and capital requirements using inforce data.
At the conclusion of the webcast, attendees will be able to:
• Design a practical LSMC process for VA pricing
• Analyze the pros and cons of different predictive models for LSMC
• Use feature engineering to improve LSMC accuracy
• Use sensitivity tests to assess the right time for model recalibration

Speakers

---

Presenters: Yu (Maggie) Lin, FSA, FCIA; Kailan Shang, FSA, ACIA; Rachel Yap, FSA, FCIA
Moderator: Kailan Shang, FSA, ACIA

July 16 - From Experience Data to Assumptions

View Session

Overview

---

How do you take experience data and turn it into a full-fledged assumption? This webcast will include two assumption development case studies; one for life and another for annuities to show how data becomes an assumption, as well as how the same data can lead to multiple assumptions that are fit for different purposes.

At the conclusion of the webcast, attendees will be able to articulate how actuaries use data to develop assumptions.

Speakers

---

Presenters: Christopher Halloran, ASA; Christopher John Hessenius, FSA, CERA, MAAA; Harold E. Luber, FSA, CERA, MAAA
Moderator: Kelly J. Rabin, FSA, MAAA

July 17 - Recent Development of High Efficiency Methods for Nested Monte Carlo Simulation

View Session

Overview

---

Today's computational power and technology make it possible for the life insurance industry to develop highly sophisticated models for stochastic projection, which were impossible just a decade ago. Nonetheless, as more industrial practices and regulations move towards dependence on stochastic models, the demand for computational power continues to grow. While the industry continues to rely heavily on hardware innovations, trying to make brute force methods faster and more palatable, we are approaching a crossroads about how to proceed.
This webcast is intended to give an overview of most recent research development on`software' methodologies for improving computational efficiency of nested Monte Carlo simulation. Most of these methodologies have been tested with wide applicability to interest/market risk sensitive insurance and annuity products.

At the conclusion of the webcast, attendees will be able to appreciate the implementation challenges of nested stochastic modeling and understand the latest development of new techniques to speed up nested simulation.

Speakers

---

Presenters: Mingbin (Ben) Feng, ASA, Ph.D.; Runhuan Feng, FSA, CERA, Ph.D.; Shuai (Alex) Yang, ASA, CERA, ACIA
Moderator: Runhuan Feng, FSA, CERA, Ph.D.

July 20 - GAAP Targeted Improvements (GTI): Data Impacts and Plausible Solutions

View Session

Overview

---

There is a lot of focus on GTI and its impact on modeling, methodology and transition. However, given the dependencies that exist on the data infrastructure, the implementation of the guidelines is an ideal opportunity to streamline and improve data storage, data transformation and reporting processes to create an efficient, effective and scalable data solution.

The presenters will focus on the specific impacts and possible solutions to the following data processes:
• Inforce data, experience studies and assumption setting
• Post model data feeds and subledger processes
• Data warehouse and reporting systems

At the conclusion of the webcast, attendees will be able to:
• Understand key data processes that will be impacted under GTI
• Identify plausible solutions to create improved and scalable processes
• Utilize the knowledge gained to apply it to their GTI implementation strategy for an improved overall data framework

Speakers

---

Presenters: Vikas Advani, FSA; Pratik Gupta, FSA, CERA; Brian P. Lenius, FSA, MAAA 
Moderator: Vikas Advani, FSA

July 23 - Impact of LDTI on Product Design

View Session

Overview

---

This webcast will explore the impact on product design from LDTI accounting policy decisions, actuarial methodology decisions and system design choices made during implementation.

At the conclusion of the webcast, attendees will be able to understand the cross functional interactions of the LDTI implementation and identify important issues and potential impacts to product design.

Speakers

---

Presenters: Tim R. Bishop, FSA, FCIA; Srinivasan Iyer; Yuan Tao, FSA, MAAA
Moderator: Srinivasan Iyer

July 24 - VM-20: The Future of Term and ULSG Product Development Under VM-20 Cancelled

Overview

---

This webcast will be based on research performed on alternative term and ULSG product designs priced using VM-20 reserves. The research covers the differences between the current XXX regime and the new VM-20 framework and explores what the results mean for the future of Term and ULSG product designs and the future of the Term & ULSG market.

At the conclusion of the webcast, attendees will have an understanding of how the VM-20 framework changes pricing and product development for Term and ULSG, and how these changes may impact the future of the Term and ULSG Market.

Speakers

---

Presenters: Michael David Cremisi, FSA, MAAA
Moderator: Paul Fedchak, FSA, MAAA

July 20 - Validating Emerging Underwriting Tools -- Algorithmic Underwriting Models and Epigenetics

View Session

Overview

---

Algorithmic modeling and epigenetics are two emerging tools to form an underwriting decision for a life insurance policy. In this session we will review the parallels between these two approaches, how they relate to one another, and how we should evaluate the performance of such tools.

Speakers

---

Presenters: Brian Chen, Ph.D., MPH; Brian Chen, Ph.D., MPH; Randy Olson
Moderator: Hezhong (Mark) Ma, FSA, MAAA

July 23 - Risks and Ethical Issues with Predictive Analytics and AI

View Session

Overview

---

The pace of new technology is creating difficult ethical questions for insurance companies. This webcast will help you address them.

This webcast will cover the major concepts of the SOA report “Ethical Use of Artificial Intelligence for Actuaries,” including the five pillars of ethical AI. Some primary sources of PA and AI risks include the following:
• Data risks, resulting from imperfect or misunderstood data
• Bias risks, resulting from both deliberate and unintentional bias that can manifest itself at many points in the PA or AI development process
• Automation risks, where the automation of a process can have unintended consequences
• Amateurish development, where the systems are not developed by AI professionals and unintended consequences result

Certain concepts such as the difference between compliance and ethics, as well as social context and how it can guide when ethical questions arise, will be discussed. This session will also cover the actuarial precepts involved.

At the conclusion of the webcast, attendees will:
• Have a more thorough understanding of how the use of PA and AI can potentially lead to improper results
• Be able to recognize situations and apply some of the techniques and tools to prevent or minimize conscious and unconscious bias
• Be able to identify how to apply and deal with constructing and using ethical predictive modeling programs which also aligns with the Actuarial Code of Professional Conduct

Speakers

---

Presenters: Kevin J. Pledge, FSA, FIA; Neil Raden
Moderator: Kevin J. Pledge, FSA, FIA

July 24 - Cloud Computing: Its Impact Across the Policy Life Cycle

View Session

Overview

---

The presenters will discuss the current and potential future impact of cloud computing and an expanded cloud infrastructure. The presenters, who have extensive experience in delivering actuarial solutions, will explore both cloud computing now as well as the future larger impact of cloud-based delivery systems on the actuarial profession. Key areas covered are:
• How the cloud can provide insurance companies with added agility and flexibility to meet future requirements and be better prepared to meet future business transformations
• The impact of cloud computing on the speed, flexibility, scalability, and operating cost to the entire policy live cycle
• The impact of micro services through application programming interfaces (APIs) on actuarial workloads

Speakers

---

Presenters: Nicholas Leimer; Bryon Robidoux, FSA, CERA, Paul Maher
Moderator: Blake A. Hill, FSA, FCIA