CALL FOR PAPERS
Issues in our time
A relatively short period in the history of insurance, the past some three decades have seen life insurance and pensions undergo major changes driven by multiple and interacting forces. The following list of key-words is probably noncontroversial, but emphasis and pros and cons may be debatable. Deregulation in the eighties. Financial innovation and emergence of huge derivatives markets. Growth in volume of trades, increasingly research- and technology-driven. Financial instability culminating in the on-going crisis. In life insurance and pensions: Demutualization, dissolution of portfolios, increasing mobility of insurance contracts (buy-outs, individual and bulk), surrenders and paid-up policies. The traditional with profit scheme gave way to a plethora of products equipped with various forms of guarantees. Hence risk management increasingly based on market operations: reinsurance, swaps, securitization. Pension crisis triggered by faltering markets and improved longevity. Occupational schemes moving from defined benefits to defined contributions. Renewed interest in with profit? Or seek new ways of adapting premiums and benefits to indices for interest and mortality? Risk classification driven by technology (gene tests) or legislation (gender neutrality). Disability and long term care in an ageing population. Reintroduction of regulation. Solvency II, IFRS, external models vs internal models/ORSA. Valuation of assets and liabilities (what is MCEV?). Furthemore: consolidation, globalization, emergence of insurance markets in developing countries. And, not least, the impact of advances in the mathematical theories of finance and insurance and their interface.
Topics
The list of issues is just a backdrop meant to encourage and inspire contributions from participants. The Scientific Committee has chosen not to add a list of more specific topics that might narrow the scope of the conference. At the end of the day the programme will be shaped by the submissions, which transpire from what prospective participants are actually doing. Papers can be scientific, applied, or surveys. The criteria for selection of papers are relevance to the objectives of the IAALS and PBSS, quality of the presentation, novelty if the paper is theoretical, and impact on actuarial practice - demonstrated or potential - if the paper is applied.
Best paper awards
The LIFE and PBSS Sections are granting two prizes of CAD 1000 each, one to the author(s) of the best IAALS paper and one to the author(s) of the best PBSS paper. The winners may be selected by the Scientific Committee and be announced and awarded their prizes during the Colloquium. IACA may be offering a $500 C prize for best IACA track paper/session.
Provisional instructions to authors
Synopsis
A synopsis of the contribution needs to be submitted by e-mail to ragnar.norberg@univ-lyon1.fr no later than 31st of January 2015. The synopsis should be submitted as a Pdf file, about one page long. It should include name and affiliation of each author, full postal and electronic address of the corresponding author, title of the paper, an outline of its contents, and a parsimonious list of key references. The outline should give a succinct and adequate account of the paper’s purpose, methods, results/conclusions, and relations to existing literature.
Provisional acceptance
The Scientific Committee will short-list contributions for presentation on the basis of the submitted synopses and communicate its decision (acceptance or rejection and possibly pieces of feed-back) to each individual corresponding author no later than 28th of February 2015. Accordingly, a tentative programme for the Colloquium will be posted on the homepage at this stage.
Full paper
A complete version of the paper is to be submitted to ragnar.norberg@univ-lyon1.fr no later than 31st of March 2015. It should be a Pdf file, no more than 30 pages long, with standard margins and font-size 12. It should be written in English or French and, in terms of quality of contents and presentation, meet the standards of recognized professional and scientific journals. The front page should display name and affiliation of each author, full postal and electronic address of the corresponding author, title of the paper, and an abstract that needs to be self-contained (no reference to items in the body of the paper) and legible to non-specialists (no jargon and acronyms). Pages should be numbered. The text should be organised in numbered sections, starting with section “1. Introduction”. Formula numbers should appear on the right and be of the form (3.2) (second formula in Section 3). Footnotes should be avoided as far as possible. References should be arranged alphabetically, and for the same author chronologically. Use a, b, c etc to separate publications of the same author in the same year. For journal references give author(s), year in parentheses, title, journal in italics, volume in boldface, and pages. For book references give author(s), year in parentheses, title in italics, and publisher. Examples:
References
Borch, K. (1969a): The rescue of an insurance company after ruin. ASTIN Bulletin 5, 280-292.
Borch, K. (1969b): The optimal reinsurance treaty. ASTIN Bulletin 5, 293-297.
Feller, W. (1971): An Introduction to Probability Theory and Its Applications Vol. II, J. Wiley & Sons.
Acknowledgments should appear just before the list of references. Appendices should be placed at the end (after the list of references) and be equipped with headings Appendix if just one and Appendix 1, Appendix 2,...if more than one.
Final acceptance
The submitted final version of the paper will be subjected to the scrutiny of the Scientific Committee. They reserve the right to reject the paper if it is deemed unsuitable for presentation to the colloquium for any reason, e.g poor presentation, lack of originality, plagiarism issues, or lack of compliance with the requested format. The corresponding author will be notified about the final decision no later than 15th of April 2015.
Presentation file
The presentation file must be submitted at ragnar.norberg@univ-lyon1.fr no later than 31st of May 2015. It needs to be compatible with standard hardware/software for projector presentation from pc, hence pages must be in landscape format as produced by e.g. Power Point or Latex \documentclass[a4paper,landscape]{slides}. The first page (or pages) should be identical to the first page of the full paper. The presentation file needs to be self-contained and include the list of references.
Publication
Accepted contributions will be posted on a proceedings page linked to the Colloquium website http://www.actuaries.org/oslo2015/. Upon the request of the corresponding author, only the presentation file will appear in the conference proceedings provided that the presentation is sufficiently self-contained and that reference can be given to a permanent electronic source where the full paper is displayed or will appear shortly (e.g. an electronic journal).
Further information
Enquiries about the procedures described here should be directed to the Chairman of the Scientific Committee, Ragnar Norberg, at ragnar.norberg@univ-lyon1.fr
