The new 2019 LFV syllabus is now available on the SOA’s LFV page.
The most notable change for 2019 is that the Valuation of Life Insurance Liabilities, 4th ed. (“VLIL”) has been replaced by the 5th ed., which also has a brand new name: Statutory Valuation of Individual Life and Annuity Contracts (“SVILAC”). I’ve been studying the 5th ed. since it was published last summer in anticipation that it would be added to the LFV syllabus, and we have already completed much of the work to update our lessons. These updates will be posted in the first half of November.
If you’ve been studying the 4th edition, that time was not wasted. Most of the “meat” of the 4th ed., especially all of the formula-based reserve mechanics from Ch. 5 of the 4th ed. are still in the 5th ed. That said, the 5th ed. adds quite a lot of new material, and I strongly recommend using the 5th ed. going forward since the 4th ed. is no longer on syllabus. You will find a more detailed mapping from VLIL to SVILAC inside the online seminar.
The new SVILAC book is well-written and also replaces several other study notes (e.g. various actuarial guidelines) that were dropped. This is very good news, in my opinion, because the SVILAC material is easier to grasp than reading actuarial guidelines directly.
Other “noteworthy” notes:
- The amount of IFRS 17 included on the US syllabus has been reduced, but there is still plenty to know for IFRS 17
- There is more content related to FASB’s targeted improvements to US GAAP, but all of the previous GAAP material is still on syllabus as well
The rest of this blog post breaks the changes into new, modified, and dropped readings.
New readings:
- Statutory Valuation of Individual Life and Annuity Contracts — Volume I, 5th ed., 2018
- Ch 1 (excluding 1.1-1.9)
- Ch. 2 (excluding 2.1 & 2.3-2.5)
- Ch. 3, 4, 5 (all)
- Ch. 10 (excluding 10.1.3 & 10.3.8)
- Ch. 11 (excluding 11.3.9-11.3.11)
- Ch. 12, 13 (all)
- Ch. 14 (excluding 14.4.8, 14.4.9, 14.5.0 & 14.6.2-14.6.6)
- Ch. 16 (all)
- Ch. 18 (excluding 18.7.4 & 18.8)
- Ch. 19, 20, 21 (all)
- Ch. 22 (excluding 22.3-22.4)
- LFV-837-19: Proposed Changes to US GAAP — An Impact Analysis of Proposed Targeted Improvements, Milliman Research Paper, 2017
- “Negative GAAP Term Insurance Reserves—to Floor or Not to Floor?” Financial Reporter, Dec 2016
- LFV-839-19: U.S. GAAP Targeted Improvements for Long Duration Insurance Contracts
- ASOP 52 — Principle-Based Reserves for Life Products under the NAIC Valuation Manual on PBR for Life Products, Section 3
Modifications to existing readings (changes in included page ranges):
In each of the following cases, the entire study note was previously on syllabus, but starting spring 2019, the page range for each has been reduced. Please read these carefully.
- LFV-102-09 — Appendix D is now excluded
- LFV-804-16: Only pp. 822.1–822.17 are included now
- LFV-828-17: Pages 20–29 are now excluded
- LFV-812-10: Pages 15–31 are now excluded
- LFV-822-16: Pages 6–8 are now excluded
- LFV-831-17: The following appendices are now excluded: 2, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10 and 11
- This is a significant reduction to the amount of appendix material included for AG 43!
- LFV-141-18: Only the following sections are included now: 1, 2, 4, and 6.1-2
The page range for the following reading was actually increased:
- “Model Efficiency Study Results”: The total included page range is now pp. 10–30 and 43–49. Previously, only pp. 43–49 were on syllabus.
Dropped from the syllabus:
The following readings were dropped, but substantially all of the concepts covered by these former readings are now covered in the new SVILAC book. The good news is that the SVILAC book is much more readable than the SVL and AGs themselves!
- Valuation of Life Insurance Liabilities, 4th ed. (all chapters dropped)
- LFV-803-14: NAIC Standard Valuation Law
- LFV-811-10: Actuarial Guideline 35
- LFV-830-17: Actuarial Guideline 36
The following IFRS study notes were dropped:
- LFV-134-16: IFRS PWC Ready or Not
- LFV-140-17: Investor Perspectives — Mind the Gap?
What’s next:
We will be rolling out updates starting next week, and we anticipate that most, if not all, lesson updates will be done by end of November. We are also doing some reorganization in several sections to optimize the order of the readings based on the syllabus changes. I will post more details on that soon, and we will include very specific details about what to expect in the Revision History and Scheduled Updates spreadsheet in the Introduction section of the online seminar.