Pandemics: IFoA actuarial resources

Continuous Mortality Investigation

During the coronavirus pandemic, the Continuous Mortality Investigation (CMI) is publishing weekly mortality updates. All mortality monitor weekly updates are publicly available on the mortality monitor page.

* The CMI operates as a not-for-profit private company that is wholly owned by the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries (IFoA).

Addressing the Covid-19 pandemic

Outputs by the IFoA Covid-19 Action Taskforce (ICAT) can also be found arranged by topic on the ICAT worksteams webpages.

Articles

• The Prevalence Of Procyclicality In The Financial Industry- Procyclical Behaviour Through The COVID-19 Crisis, 21 June 2021
   
• Updated National Narratives on COVID-19 as of 30 April 2021, 8 June 2021
   
• Solvency II – countercyclical capital requirements and regulatory flexibility, 26 January 2021
   
• National Narratives on COVID-19 - Introduction - January 2021
   
• National narratives - Brazil - 21 January 2021
   
• National narratives - Ghana - 21 January 2021
   
• National narratives - India - 21 January 2021
   
• National narratives - Malawi - January 2021
   
• National narratives - New Zealand - 21 January 2021
   
• National narratives - Poland - 21 January 2021
   
• National narratives - Singapore - 21 January 2021
   
• National narratives - United Arab Emirates - 21 January 2021
   
• Impact Investing – Can We Make Returns and Reduce Inequality? 22 January 2021
   
• Shoring up defences during market volatility, The Actuary, Niamh Carr, Kamran Foroughi, 25 August 2020.
   
• Coronavirus statistics in the UK: How reliable is the data? Richard Kelsey, 12 June 2020. 
   
• COVID-19: Using an Automated Chain Ladder technique to predict ultimate Daily Deaths in a live environment, Richard Kelsey, 10 June 2020.
   
• Mortality risk factors, Matthew Edwards, 15 May 2020.
   
• The co-morbidity question, Matthew Edwards and Stuart McDonald, The Actuary, May 2020.
   
• What is the difference between longevity and mortality? Matthew Edwards, 28 April 2020. 
   
• Modelling and Covid-19. Louise Pryor, Institute and Faculty of Actuaries. 26 March 2020.

Blogs

• Social protection initiatives and COVID-19 in Africa, ICAT Social Security Group, Chris Sutton, 30 June 2021

• Bringing sustainability to the forefront of COVID-19 recovery, ICAT, Sheel Shah and Madhuri Kumar, 6 May 2021

• Problems with targeting GDP growth, ICAT, James Fisher, 30 April 2021

• Managing Social Security Pensions Costs ICAT Social Security Group, 23 April 2021.
   
• The impact of the pandemic on retirement provision, 27 January 2021.
   
• Universal Basic Income: Where have UBI schemes not been implemented? Stephen Moncrief, 27 January 2021.
   
• Impact Investing – Can We Make Returns and Reduce Inequality? 27 January 2021. 
   
• Financial reporting issues arising from Covid-19. 25 January 2021
   
• What is the goal as we build back better from the aftermath of COVID-19? Josephine Robertson,18 January 2021. 
   
• The road ahead to motor insurance reserving, Harshitta Malakar, from the IFoA’s COVID-19 ICAT General Insurance Claims Inflation group, 13 January 2021.
   
• What happens if hospital capacity is breached? Stuart McDonald 08 January 2021
   
• Social Inflation, 06 January 2021.
   
• Social Security systems act as a window on future COVID-19 related imbalances, 06 January 2021. 
   
• Universal Basic Income: What is the experience? Stephen Moncrief, 31 December 2020.
   
• Impact of Covid-19 on health insurance in India, 31 December 2020.
   
• Unforeseen challenges: An insight into volunteering on an IFoA pandemic working group, PAN4 COVID-19 workstream, 31 December 2020.
   
• Impact of Covid-19 on Marine and Aviation Insurance, 23 December 2020.

• Global product innovation in the pandemic - part 1 (non-life). 15 December 2020

• Keeping the mortality spike in context, Phil Caine, 22 December 2020.
   
• International Data Source Log, 25 November 2020. 
   
• Covid-19’s impact on the charge assumptions for unit-linked business, 17 November 2020.
   
• Impact of Covid-19 on margins over and above best estimate assumptions in financial reporting, 12 November 2020.
   
• Is now the time for Universal Basic Income?, Stephen Moncrief, 06 November 2020.
   
• Considerations for setting persistency assumptions, 30 October 2020.
   
• Using hindsight to gain foresight, 28 October 2020. 
   
• Impact of Covid-19 on life insurance new business sales, 27 October 2020.
   
• Bonus rates for participating products in a Covid-19 world, 23 October 2020.
   
• Potential differences in impacts of Covid-19 in different countries, 12 October 2020. 
   
• Covid-19: Is social security failing amidst the pandemic?, Laura Llewellyn-Jones, 15 October 2020. 
   
• Furlough vs. Unemployment Support - which is best?, Alan Newton, 30 September 2020. 
   
• The prevalence of pro-cyclicality in the financial industry, Denis Walsh, 28 September 2020. 
   
• Covid-19, outcome bias and the impact on actuarial analysis, Gordon Woo, Will Davies, Matt Attard, Sophie Weisenberger, 21 September 2020.
   
• The Minsky Moment of Fallen Angels Risk, Lawrence Habahbeh, 15 September 2020.
   
• Communicating actuarial concepts with real-world examples from the COVID-19 pandemic, Andrea Munley, 09 September 2020
   
• So you’ve caught the pandemic modelling bug; now what?, Richard Marshall, 26 August 2020.
   
• Income and inequalities - thoughts as we emerge from lockdown, Andrew Robinson, John Branford, Naliaka Wafula, Sukrita Chabbra, 17 August 2020. 
   
• Property: another COVID-19 victim, Lizzie Waghorn and David Mitchell, 12 August 2020. 
   
• Addressing sustainability: Why actuaries need to change their mindset to change the world, Simon Jones, 10 August, 2020. 
   
• The Investment Manager’s View: It’s Day 135 in the Big Brother House, John Roe, 07, August, 2020.
   
• Who’s afraid of adverse selection? Pradip Tapadar, Guy Thomas, 04 August, 2020.
   
• The impact of COVID-19 on social care, Ian Collier, James Cripps, Fiona Fan and Adele Groyer, 03 August 2020.
   
• ONS data – providing early indicators to insurers, Steve Bale, 6 July 2020
   
• It was on the risk register, Neil Cantle, 6 July 2020 
   
• Zoom boom or Zoom doom?, Oliver Shaw, Institute and Faculty of Actuaries, 10 June 2020. 
   
• How good is my test?, Louise Pryor, Insititute and Faculty of Actuaries, 05 June 2020. 
   
• ICAT COVID-19 survey results, Kirstin Cam, Julie Pallister, Holly Steward, and Randall Wright of the IFoA’s COVID-19 Action Taskforce (ICAT) summarise a recent survey of ICAT volunteers. 04 June 2020.
   
• COVID-19: the need for liquidity and dealing with increased asset volatility – what can insurers and pension funds do? Norman Peard, 27 May 2020.
   
• COVID-19 report: Impact on new business in health & care, 21 May 2020.
   
• So close yet so far: COVID-19 isolation, Rosalind Rossouw, IFoA’s Diversity Advisory Group, 11 May 2020.
   
• Uncertainty and Coronavirus, Andrew Smith, Professor at University College, Dublin, 7 May 2020.
   
• COVID-19 impact on individual assets and balance sheet for Insurers, Gareth Mee, Deputy Chair of the IFoA’s Finance and Investment Board, 06 May 2020. 
   
• What a difference a word makes, Matthew Edwards, 27 April 2020.
   
• Investment Actuaries: Check your COVID-19 response, Dick Rae, IFoA Finance and Investment Board Chair, 21 April 2020.
   
• Global Pandemic - the great leveller? Chika Aghadiuno, Chair of the IFoA’s Diversity Advisory Group. 17 April 2020.
   
• Home working: Has your business thoroughly assessed the risk? Vishesh Gosranit and Stephanie Eybers. 25 April 2020.
   
• Scheme Actuaries: check your Covid-19 contingency plans. Mark Williams, IFoA Pensions Practice Board Chair, 25 April 2020. 

Regulation

• Contingency plans for Practising Certificate holders
   
• Risk Alert COVID-19
   
• Covid-19 and IFoA regulation: how it affects IFoA members

Webinars

• National Narratives on Covid-19

• Twitter Sentiment Analysis: What does Social Media tell us about coronavirus concerns in the UK? 
   
• Extreme Mortality Events – How Bad is Coronavirus?
   
• Challenging Conventional Wisdom – What Currently Accepted ‘Truths’ About COVID-19 Are Wrong?

Reports and papers 

• COVID-19 Scenario Modelling: Healthcare Sector Scenarios This paper presents some of the parameters that can be used for pandemic scenario. However, modelling might require time dependent variables for some of the scenarios. This paper proposes 5 possible stress scenarios using following parameters. By Ritu Kotnala, 6 June 2021.

• The effect of Covid-19 on Private Real Estate Debt COVID-19 pandemic caused major disruption in the global economy and brought about “the new normal”. In this short article, Private Credit for Insurers Working Party investigates the impact of the pandemic on the CRE debt market and outlook for the future. 5 May 2021

• Small Businesses Weathering the COVID-19 Storm This note by Isha Gadewar and Aldous Silas A, gives us an insight into the difficulties faced by micro, small and medium sizes enterprises (MSMEs) during the COVID-19 pandemic and the ways in which they tackled these problems. We also explore how we, as actuaries, can support them. 28 april 2021

• Capital Market and Economic Assumptions: The potential effect of the pandemic. This note considers such issues and the implications for actuaries in setting capital market and economic assumptions. 26 April 2021

• Scenario Modelling of COVID-19: Analysis of key classes in P&C industry. This paper by Darshan Purmessur and Haedeh Nazari gives guidance on stress testing and scenario analysis and aims to offer a perspective on the forecast of some key classes of business for general insurers. This would allow the analysis of the impact of severe events or sequence of events on the financial state of short-term insurers. 23 April 2021

• Mortality Impact of COVID-19 Vaccination in England: publication of models and an update. This report presents updated data and findings, as a follow-up to the earlier results in the paper “Mortality Impact of COVID-19 Vaccination in England: Counterfactual Insights from Gompertz to Machine Learning", published on 1 March 2021. Additionally we provide estimation of the number of deaths prevented by vaccination and compare against the Public Health England and Warwick University studies. 29 March 2021

• Mortality Impact of COVID-19 Vaccination in England  What is the mortality impact of COVID-19 vaccination in England? John Ng and Scott Reid explore this question, by applying actuarial and data science techniques through using counterfactual “unvaccinated” scenarios, where they provide key insights into actual versus expected mortality for ages 80 years of age and above. 2 March 2021.
   
• Covid-19 and pension saving: A perspective of product providers - In a discussion with representatives of leading defined contribution providers, members of the Institute’s ICAT DC work stream learned of the behaviours of employees in response to COVID-19 during 2020. 16 February 2021
   
• Covid-19 and pension saving: The impact of missing contributions - The results of our modelling suggest that, unsurprisingly, the impact will vary depending on age, the period during which contributions are missed, and the various future economic conditions. The upside is that on reasonable assumptions, and allowing for some sensitivity margins, the resolution by way of additional future contributions could be manageable if action is taken immediately upon returning to work. 16 February 2021
   
• General Insurance Pandemic Scenario Modelling: Constructing a Simplified Exposure-Based Realistic Disaster Scenario (RDS). This paper has been authored by Maryam Abdullah. 26 January 2021

• Cyber Security Implications of COVID-19 for Companies. 18 January 2021

• Countercyclical measures in Solvency II. This paper has been authored by a group of Life actuaries led by Paul Fulcher. The group has a focus on Capital Management and is working as part of the IFoA Covid-19 Action Taskforce. 04 January 2021. 

• COVID-19 Report: Statistics, Ratios and understanding limitations of data available, The paper has been authored by L.R. Lopes Junior, S. Aggarwal, M. Qazvini, 30 December 2020

• Pandemic impact on the insurance and pension industry, The paper has been authored by John Dalmaris, Ashley Campbell, Aparna Batra and Naman Jain, 22 December 2020
   
• Pandemic Model Meta-Research - Tranche 1: Reviews of models published at the start of the outbreak
   
• Case Study: Personal and Commercial Lines Motor
   
• How insurance company solvency ratios performed during COVID-19, authored by a group of Life actuaries led by Ivy Ye
   
• Case Study: Travel Insurance
   
• COVID-19 report: Impact on distribution of protection products - This report considers the impact that COVID-19 has had, and continues to have, on the distribution of protection products in the U.K. We begin by considering the impact of the pandemic during the initial phase (when a strict lockdown was in place), the period following the strict lockdown and the potential long-term impact of the pandemic. Authored by Adele Groyer, Chris Reynolds and Vicky Gardner.
   
• Countercyclical measures in Solvency II - This paper has been authored by a group of Life actuaries led by Paul Fulcher. The group has a focus on Capital Management and is working as part of the IFoA Covid-19 Action Taskforce.
   
• Covid-19 Action Taskforce (ICAT) for General Insurance Pricing Actuaries: Case Study: Impact on Directors and Officers - How COVID-19 is impacting the work of Directors and Officers in General Insurance.
   
• Economic hardship, health and COVID-19, (Health and Care) This bulletin is authored by Nicola Oliver and Scott Reid and is focused on the economic consequences of COVID-19 on employment and subsequent mental health outcomes.
   
• COVID-19 and Future Pandemic Scenario Modelling for Property and Casualty (P&C) Insurers and Reinsurers - In this report Maryam Abdullah, Haedeh Nazari and Darshan Purmessur explore the various lines exposures to COVID-19 and look at the potential P&C market changes caused by it. They also attempt to define processes for P&C pandemic scenario modelling and exposure management.
   
• COVID-19 and pandemic response unemployment - COVID-19 is causing a severe economic recession in the United Kingdom (UK) due to unprecedented government interventions to control the virus that was declared a pandemic on 11 March 2020 . In this bulletin Scott Reid, John Ng, Dr Chris Martin and Josephine Robertson focus on UK unemployment forecasts where the working group have provided an application using R-Shiny to enable actuaries to consider a range of expert opinions and functionality to create custom scenarios. The code for this is open access.
   
• COVID-19 Report: Impact on social care (Health and Care) - In this paper James Cripps, Adele Groyer, Ian Collier and Fiona Fan look to provide some insight into the impact of COVID-19 on social care and the health and wellbeing of those receiving care. We focus on the UK, but we consider the relative outcomes in other countries and any insight that provides.
   
• COVID-19 Report: Impact on New Business (Health and Care) - In this paper, Adele Groyer, Christopher Reynolds and Vicky Gardner consider the challenges posed by COVID-19 on the distribution and risk management of new business in the UK individual and group protection space.
   
• COVID-19 Report: Supporting protection insurance and savings customers (Health and Care) - In this paper Richard Purcell and Nick Reilly consider the potential direct and indirect impacts of COVID-19 on customers and what can be done by government and UK providers of protection insurance and long-term savings products to support them.
   
• COVID-19 Report: Identifying insured customers more at risk (Health and Care) - In this Paper Scott Reid, David Beddows, Raunak Jha, Nicola Oliver, and John Ng review some of the key studies available to date to understand insights into the impact on mortality and morbidity at a high level from the perspective of an insurer, as well considering how COVID-19 may impact insured populations and which customers are likely to be most at risk.

Digests

• The Economic Impacts of COVID-19: Digest 3
   
• The Economic Impacts of COVID-19: Digest 2.
   
• The Economic Impacts of COVID-19: Digest 1. 

Longevity Bulletin: The coronavirus issue (Issue 13)

In 2020 coronavirus swept around the world, causing over a million deaths to date and creating economic turmoil. Issue 13 of the Longevity Bulletin considers aspects of the biggest worldwide catastrophe of our age.