The limited attendance seminar is a workshop, including a hands-on component, that teaches the basic concepts and techniques of dynamic financial analysis (DFA) in a small group, classroom environment. The target audience for this seminar includes actuaries and other financial professionals who have an interest in, but not necessarily experience with, DFA. A working knowledge of the basic principles and terminology of casualty actuarial science will be assumed. Class size and total enrollment may be limited to guarantee sufficient individual attention.
The seminar will cover the following topics:
- Description of what DFA is and what it can do, and the context within which it can be applied.
- History of DFA-types of analyses for banking institutions, life insurers, and property-liability insurers.
- Comparison of scenario testing and stochastic simulation approaches to DFA.
- Discussion of common DFA issues, including economic and financial variables (such as interest rates), correlations among assets and liabilities and among lines of business, parameter selection, etc.
- Detailed description of the public-access DFA model that has been developed by, and is available from, Pinnacle Actuarial Resources, Inc., at www.pinnacleactuarial.com.
- Supervised hands-on use of this DFA model, including sensitivity testing.
- Discussion of reports that can be generated from DFA, and how the results can be interpreted and incorporated into business strategies (e.g., changing growth rates and entry/exit decisions).
- Discussion of issues associated with simulating certain economic and financial variables.
- Overview of future enhancements to DFA, including the need for additional types of insurance data, empirical studies to improve parameter estimation, and additional potential applications of DFA techniques.
The seminar will consist of approximately one and a half days of instruction (beginning on the afternoon of Tuesday, July 29), plus an evening workshop involving a hands-on DFA assignment. Each participant will need to bring a personal computer (notebook-size or larger) that is loaded with Microsoft Excel (version 5.0 for Windows 95 or higher). For those without a portable computer, the CAS can arrange for a rental at an additional cost. Please note this on your registration form.
Before the seminar, registrants will be provided with a selection of articles on DFA, documentation on the DFA model to be used in this course, and instructions on how to download the DFA model and any necessary software. Participants should install the software before the seminar. Examining the reading materials before the seminar will enhance the learning experience, but will not be a prerequisite for the seminar.
Instructors
Depending on the enrollment size for this workshop, the faculty will be composed of members of the following team:Stephen P. D'Arcy
University of Illinois at Urbana-ChampaignRichard W. Gorvett
Consulting ActuaryShawna S. Ackerman
Pinnacle Actuarial ResourcesCharles C. Emma
Pinnacle Actuarial ResourcesRobert J. Walling
Pinnacle Actuarial ResourcesThomas E. Hettinger
John B. Collins Associates, Inc.
