Reinsurance Section Update

Learn what’s happening with the Reinsurance Section this year and beyond Kyle Bauer and David Vnenchak October/November 2019

The Reinsurance Section’s mission is to advance the reinsurance profession through the identification and communication of emerging issues and trends for the global reinsurance community through programs and initiatives focused on education, research, professional development and networking.

While this is a very succinct tagline, it’s not an easy task given how wide ranging the disciplines, lines of business, geographic jurisdictions and areas of practice are for our diverse group of more than 1,800 members. That’s why our biannual member survey is so important. In this year’s survey, the top five topics were: mortality improvement; treaty remediation; impact of accelerated underwriting and predictive modeling on mortality/morbidity estimates; regulatory changes including capital requirements, accounting rules and tax laws; and insurance industry disruptors.

The Reinsurance Section Council uses this information to develop activities and continuing education, including:

The SOA Reinsurance Seminar
Sessions at SOA meetings
Our section newsletter, Reinsurance News
Podcasts
Webcasts

In addition, we strive to add value to two significant areas that are unique to the section: LEARN and research.

LEARN stands for Life Education and Reinsurance Navigation. LEARN volunteers provide a comprehensive overview of life and health reinsurance knowledge to state regulators and other interested parties. They work with each state Department of Insurance (DOI) to tailor the content and agenda to the specific information that the regulators feel would benefit their staff. In 2019, we have been working through an exciting enlistment of new speakers, a revamp of materials and increased overall promotion of LEARN. The SOA has been canvasing several state regulators, and we expect to hold as many as eight sessions in 2019.

The Reinsurance Section is heavily involved in developing research that impacts the reinsurance industry and related disciplines. At the time of this publication, the Reinsurance Section is supporting research projects for accelerated underwriting, recapture, extreme events, machine learning and more.

Thanks to all of our section members and volunteers who make the Reinsurance Section activities such a huge success. If you are not a section member, please consider joining. If you are a member and you’d like to become more involved, please don’t hesitate to reach out.

Kyle Bauer, FSA, CERA, MAAA, is senior vice president, Swiss Re, and the chair of the Reinsurance Section Council.

David Vnenchak, FSA, MAAA, is senior vice president, RGA, and immediate past chair of the Reinsurance Section Council.