Description: This literature guide concentrates on references that relate to U.S. annuities. Only a few sources pertain to Canadian annuities. Although similarities exist in product design between U.S. and Canadian annuities, regulation and taxation are different. This guide also focuses primarily on areas that are specific to the subject of annuities and touches upon related issues such as investments and pensions more lightly.

Description: Through much of the Baby Boomer generation's working lifetime, retirement planning focused on asset accumulation. Strategies like Dollar-Cost Averaging and Asset Diversification became well understood by nearly everyone in the retirement industry. As those assets move into the payout phase (post retirement), the appropriateness of those strategies becomes less clear. Presenters will aim to exhibit and explain how and why adding a Single Premium Immediate Annuity (SPIA) or Deferred Income Annuity (DIA) to a retirement portfolio can help to minimize a retiree's chance of outliving his or her income, and why sellers of annuities should focus more heavily on these product offerings. At the conclusion of the session, attendees will be able to - Identify the reasons why effective asset accumulation strategies may be ineffective in the decumulation phase of retirement - Evaluate the benefit of using at least a portion of accumulated retirement assets to purchase a fixed income stream that the annuitant is guaranteed not to outlive - Explain the benefits of a SPIA/DIA focus to other industry practitioners

Description: The purpose of this paper is to suggest an improved method of future mortality improvement approximation, using the a-1949 Table as the basic table. Comparisons are shown between this method and other methods for annuitants.

Description: This report presents mortality under individual immediate annuities, life income settlements, and matured deferred annuities between the 1971 and 1976 anniversaries.

Description: From session 75CS at the Spring regional meeting of the Society of Actuaries held in Atlanta, Georgia, May 24-25, 1999, Presenters identify issues and challenges faced by the valuation actuary when performing cash-flow testing on equity-indexed and variable products.

Description: Annuities are presenting ever-greater risks for the direct writers: • Variable annuities with guaranteed minimum and enhanced death benefits and income benefits • Fixed annuities with multi-year rate guarantees are capital intensive • In-force structured settlements have asset portfolios with declining investment yields • The impact to the payout annuity market from lengthening life expectancies From the Record of the Society of Actuaries, Volume 27, No. 3, Session 146 PD of the New Orleans Annual Meeting

Description: Regulatory change and increased focus on internal risk management are driving a renewed interest in model efficiency. In this session, we will review several new and existing tools, that show significant promise for advanced modeling of equity linked products. These include: • Clustering • Use of unique--and potentially a different number of--scenarios for each policy • Semi Monte Carlo (SMC) – this is a proprietary technique that is similar to a combination of Monte Carlo and numeric integration • Using a neural network approach to optimize some of the more complex and manual aspects of clustering and improve the fit of the clustered model • Combining SMC with the use of unique scenarios per policy

Description: The Required Minimum Distribution RMD working group of the Taxation Section has completed research in determining the actuarial present value of additional benefits for computing RMD under deferred annuity contracts. This is Appendix G spreadsheet for the Determining the Actuarial Present Value of Certain Additional Benefits for a two tiered fixed annuity benefit Under Treas. Reg. Section 1.401a9–6, Q&A–12 research project. Please see the SOA website research section for the full report and other appendices spreadsheets.

Description: The Required Minimum Distribution RMD working group of the Taxation Section has completed research in determining the actuarial present value of additional benefits for computing RMD under deferrred annuity contracts. This is Appendix B Example 2 spreadsheet for GMDB for this research project. Please see the SOA website research section for the full report and excel spreadsheet for the other appendices.

Description: This session at the 1998 Valuation Actuary Symposium discusses issues related to variable and fixed deferred annuity modeling.