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A valentine for actuaries. You will love how the Ruark Mortality Table will help improve product pricing and the effectiveness of variable annuity hedging programs, and serve as an efficient basis for pure mortality reinsurance.
Download: Ruark Mortality Table – Feb 2012.pdf
Elizabeth Festa of National Underwriter had an article in the January 2012 edition entitled “Policyholders Getting Smarter, Leading to Charges for VA Products, Says Moody’s”. An excerpt from this article is:
In pricing and hedging the risks of their VA contracts, companies must also make assumptions about how many customers will hold on to their policies long enough to be eligible for benefit, how many of them will exercise guaranteed benefit options when they become available and how many more of them may exercise those options, the report explains.
Jack Marrion’s Index Compendium for February 2012 includes a reference to Ruark Consulting’s recently completed Fixed Indexed Annuity Surrender Study, as follows:
Index Annuity Surrenders Sharply Down
Based on data from carriers representing 80% of industry sales, a new study published by Ruark Consulting (www.ruarkonline.com) finds that surrenders of index annuity contracts declined significantly from 2006 to 2010. Ruark believes this to be due to less competitive alternatives, use of GLWB’s and greater suitability standards. The Ruark study confirms predictions made by Advantage Compendium in 2008 that annuity exchanges would decline due to annuity lifetime benefits and tightened compliance.
Maria Wood has published an article in LifeHealthPro (which I still think of as National Underwriter) entitled “Fixed Indexed Annuity Holders Keep Holding On”. It is another article based on Ruark Consulting’s Fixed Indexed Annuity Surrender Study. It can be viewed at:
Fixed Indexed Annuity Holders Keep Holding On
Linda Koco has published an article in AnnuityNews.com entitled “More Policyholders Keeping Their Indexed Annuities”. It is based on the results from Ruark Consulting’s Fixed Indexed Annuity Surrender Study. It can be viewed at:
More Policyholders Keeping Their Indexed Annuities
SIMSBURY, CT/January 5, 2012 – Ruark Consulting LLC, a Connecticut-based actuarial consulting firm, has completed its 2011 Fixed Indexed Annuity Surrender Study. This ground-breaking study includes unprecedented detail on the impact of various product features on policy persistency, which is invaluable for insurance companies to manage risk and design appropriate products.
Key findings include:
Ruark Consulting is an Event Sponsor at the Equity-Based Insurance Guarantees Conference taking place in Chicago on November 14 & 15, 2011. Tim Paris is the presenter on November 15 of “Policyholder Behavior Trends, Dynamics & Cohorts for VA’s and IA’s”. Stop by and see Tim and his associates. More information on the conference can be found at the SOA website at:
SOA Equity-Based Insurance Guarantees Conference
Tim Paris’ presentation at the SOA Annual Meeting on Managing Longevity and Mortality Risks is available here. Longevity risk is an under-appreciated risk in variable annuity guaranteed living benefits. Tim welcomes comments and discussion.
Tim Paris – Managing Longevity and Mortality Risks
Rich Tucker, Tim Paris and Steve Wright will be attending the 2011 SOA Annual Meeting in Chicago on October 17, 18, and 19. Let us know if you will also be there.
Tim Paris will be a presenter at session 73 – Managing Longevity and Mortality Risks and Their Global Activities. The SOA website does not show Tim’s participation, but we know better.
In a previous article (When to Automate) I suggested eight considerations when one is deciding whether to automate a complicated process to improve both efficiency and accuracy. In this article I will summarize a real-life project where we used automation to achieve those goals. My hope is that you can identify processes in your own company that could similarly benefit from automation.
One of Ruark Consulting’s businesses is the administration of reinsurance treaties between insurance companies. This involves receiving very large tables of data from one company, performing extensive calculations, and creating large tables of data to be sent to the other party. The steps involved in this process are indicative of the issues to be dealt with in any automation process.
