My Reading List
#362 | Accordia and the End of an Era
Full Article Yesterday, Global Atlantic announced that “after carefully evaluating our greatest opportunities to provide the most compelling products and value…we have made the strategic decision to sharpen our focus…as a result, effective July 1, 2023, Global Atlantic will be…
#361 | Cap Price Pressure
Quick Take When AG 49 was adopted in 2015, it established the supremacy of a single crediting methodology - an S&P 500 annual point-to-point with a 0% Floor, 100% participation rate and non-guaranteed Cap. This Benchmark Index Account is what…
#360 | Quantifying Sequence of Return Risk with LISA
Full Article Risk is a fiendishly difficult thing to quantify. In financial theory, risk is usually quantified in terms of standard deviation – the greater the variance, the greater the risk. Famously, Nassim Taleb popularized the idea of “black swan”…
#359 | The New Weapons of AG 49-B
This article assumes a base level of knowledge about Indexed UL illustrations, the previous forms of AG 49, the impact of using engineered indices with fixed interest bonuses and the basic mechanics of the recent revisions to AG 49-A, colloquially…
#358 | The Asset Side
Quick Take Now that the liquidity crisis in banking seems to have ebbed, a new potential crisis is emerging - credit. There is a real and growing prospect of significant losses in certain asset classes that have enjoyed more than…
#357 | The Multi-Verse of 7702 Rates
This article was written by Steve Cox, FSA, MAAA, who is the Head of Life Insurance at Life Innovators. Earlier this year, I wrote an article talking about the impact of rising interest rates on Section 7702. The main takeaway…
#356 | Northwestern Mutual Enters the 10 Pay Fray
Quick Take At first blush, Northwestern Mutual isn't a natural fit for the highly competitive and quickly growing 10 Pay Whole Life market. Illustrated performance in short pay products generally favors companies with high Dividend Interest Rates, yet Northwestern lags…
#355 | A Financial Strength Gut Check
Quick Take Life insurer financial strength is arguably made up of three primary components - operations, assets and liabilities. The first two are well-handled by traditional resources such as financial strength ratings, but implicit in those ratings is the assumption…
#354 | SVB, Liquidity & Life Insurance
Quick Take The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank has shaken confidence in the financial system and raised questions about whether life insurers could find themselves in a similar situation. At first blush, the data is not comforting. SVB's unrealized capital…
#353 | Premium Financing & Rising Rates
Quick Take Premium financing is facing what feels like an existential threat in the form of high interest rates and lagging policy performance. In my experience, the vast majority of premium financing is sold to clients who expected leverage to…
