Update on the Actuarial Foundation

The Yellow School Bus is on its Way-Actuarial Mentors are Welcome to Board!

The new school year began this fall and The Actuarial Foundation's Advancing Student Achievement (ASA) program is looking for actuarial volunteer mentors for new and established programs in Atlanta; Cleveland Heights, Ohio; Houston; Newark, New Jersey; Sun Prairie, Wisconsin; Philadelphia; Pittsburgh; St. Louis; and Kansas City, Missouri.

If you can spare a relatively small amount of time to assist in a math-mentoring school program, please visit The Actuarial Foundation's Web Site or contact Debbie Scanlon, Project Administrator at the Actuarial Foundation by e-mailing or calling (847) 706-3600. We hope you will consider mentoring a student today and make a difference in their future.

2005 Individual Grants Competition Recipients

The Actuarial Foundation is pleased to announce the following winners of the 2005 Individual Grant Competition and their projects.

• Vytaras Brazauskas, University of Wisconsin, "Robust and Efficient Methods for Credibility"-will develop an ensemble of improved data-analysis procedures that offer various trade-offs between robustness and efficiency. The impact of such procedures on credibility premium calculations will be thoroughly investigated and quantified.

• Sebastian Jaimungal, University of Toronto, "Pricing and Hedging Equity Linked Insurance Products Under Jumps, Stochastic Volatility, Interest Rates and Mortality"-to investigate the pricing and hedging of Equity Linked Insurance (ELI) products, such as Equity Indexed Pure Endowments and Equity Indexed Annuities (EIAs), under a stochastic interest rate environment in which the risky asset is exposed to stochastic volatility, and jumps and mortality are modeled via a stochastic hazard rate process.

• Bruce Jones, University of Western Ontario, "Pricing Cycles and Ruin Probability"-will develop and explore a risk model that considers the impact of pricing cycles on insurers' ruin probabilities and will use the model to study strategies for coping with cyclic business environments.

• Kristen Moore, University of Michigan, "Optimal Surrender Strategies and Product Design for Equity-Indexed Annuities"-will examine optimal surrender strategies and product design for equity-indexed annuities. Using stochastic optimal control, they will study policyholder behavior and then examine contract features such as participation rates, death benefits, minimum guarantees, and fees that yield a product that is desirable for the investor and profitable for the insurer.

• Anthony Webb, Boston College, and Irena Dushi, "The Optimal Allocation of Aggregate Mortality Risk"-to study the aggregate mortality risk faced by annuity insurers and the risk that the average mortality of the population from which the insurer draws its annuity pool proves to be lower than expected. Insurers anticipate continued reductions in mortality, but they cannot be certain of the pace of such reductions.

The AERF Committee of The Actuarial Foundation and the Committee on Knowledge Extension Research of the Society of Actuaries support the advancement of knowledge in actuarial science with the Individual Grants Competitions.

Gifts To The Actuarial Foundation

Make your tax-deductible contribution today to The Actuarial Foundation through the convenience of online donations. Be confident that your gift is an investment in both the public interest and the actuarial profession for today and in "preparing for tomorrow's possibilities."