Agenda

Registration and morning coffee

Insurance Asset Risk welcome address

Vincent Huck, Editor, Insurance Asset Risk

KEYNOTE ADDRESS: Market drivers and the evolution of insurer portfolios

• Key market factors impacting insurer investments
• Differences in investment practices among insurer types
• Recent changes in insurer portfolios
• Investment issues and concerns for regulators

Speaker: Ed Toy, Former Director, Capital Markets Bureau, NAIC

PRESENTATION: Assessing equity and fixed income risks and opportunities

• How safe are equity portfolios?
• Are insurers prepared for future equity volatility?
• The opportunities that come with volatility and a buyers' market
• Credit spreads: trends and forecasting
• Inflationary pressures ahead
• What could replace the Build America Bonds in terms of good quality paper to invest in?
• Tax reform and the effect on municipal bonds

Speaker: Darrell Cronk, President of Wells Fargo Investment Institute, Chief Investment Officer for Wealth and Investment Management, Wells Fargo & Company

CIO PANEL: Priorities of life and non-life investment strategies

• How comfortable are CIOs with current market risk levels? What is influencing risk appetites?
• Major concentration or correlation risks and how to quantify them
• What tools are being used to measure correlation risks
• Which risk factors are CIOs most concerned by?
• How have investment strategies adapted in current market conditions?
• What are the most attractive sectors for investment?
• Which are the most overvalued sectors?
• How can CIOs balance the demands for increased yield and return from the portfolio with market risk?
• What does the next part of the cycle look like? What will trigger the next phase?
• What is your feedback mechanism to the liability side of the balance sheet?

Panellists:

Sean Corridon, Vice President and Deputy Chief Investment Officer, Chubb Group
Richard Leist, Chief Investment Officer – Affiliated Insurance Companies, MetLife's Affiliated Insurance Companies
Teresa McTague, Managing Director, Chief Investment Officer, Global Investments, Aflac
Todd Hedtke, Chief Investment Officer, Allianz Life

Moderator: Randy Brown, Chief Investment Officer, Sun Life Financial

PANEL: The top down effect of regulation on assets and liabilities

• NAIC RBC C1 review: impact on asset allocations, credit risk and portfolio optimization
• Tax reform: update on NAIC adjustment to the RBC formulae
• Investment limitations in the statutes of both
• PBR and VM-20 reserves: it objectives and reserve impacts
• Progress of the Variable Annuities Issues Working Group: VM 21 & VM 22 review
• Data and analysis of investment activity: how they relate to the VA WG activities and PBR
• Determining the tax reserve to use for pricing and projections
• Model construction and development

Panelists:

Erik Anderson, Vice President & Actuary, New York Life
John Robinson, Director PBR – Valuation Actuary, Minnesota Department of Commerce
John Rehagen, Director, Insurance Company Regulation Division, Missouri Department of Insurance

Moderator: Hal Pedersen, Managing Director, Risk Solutions, Conning

PRESENTATION: New FASB accounting standards: Long-Duration Insurance Contracts and CECL

• Overview of the accounting changes for long-duration contracts
• GAAP balance sheet and earnings effects
• Impact on asset/liability management and hedging strategies
• Insurer readiness: processes and systems 

Alex Casas, Senior Project Manager, Insurance Contracts Project Lead, Financial Accounting Standards Board
Jay Shah, Project Manager, Credit Losses (CECL) Project Lead, Financial Accounting Standards Board

PANEL: ALM strategies and pressures

• Challenges and approaches to managing the balance sheet
• Liquidity planning and ALM: how constrained are insurers?
• ALM constraints under economic capital regulatory pressures: what are the trends in risk-return trade-offs?
• What are the preferred matching strategies in the current interest rate environment?
• What is shaping asset allocation decisions? Are insurers adjusting the duration of assets?
• Reinvestment risks: are there enough options for matching strategies?

Panelists:

Carl Groth, Group Financial Risk Officer, Principal Financial Group
Xiaowei Han, Director, Universal Life Financial Reporting, Transamerica
Ben Wydick, Vice President, Market Risk, CUNA Mutual Group

Moderator: Vincent Huck, Editor, Insurance Asset Risk

PRESENTATION: Interest rate risks and opportunities

• Is the era of low interest rates coming to an end?
• How are interest rates impacting life insurers' earnings, capital reserves and liquidity?
• What is the effect of interest rates on ALM mismatch risk tolerances?
• How will rising rates tip the balance between product and assets for life insurers?

Pooja Rahman, Head of Financial Risk, New York Life

PRESENTATION: Navigating fixed income markets using semi-liquid credit

• Avoiding over-crowded pockets of the market
• How to embrace complexity and off-the-run opportunities to find value
• Assessing risk late in the cycle: don't reach for yield

 Alex Wright, Managing Director, Credit, Apollo Global Management

PANEL: Risk management and optimizing investment strategies

• Best practices in risk management and investment optimization
• How important is the quality of the underlying economic scenarios in managing risk and investment strategy?
• How should a view on evolving economic conditions be incorporated into risk management and investment programs?
• Incorporating management decisions into a dynamic risk model
• What are some analytical tools that can help a CIO with enterprise risk management?
• What are the challenges in bringing alternative asset classes into the analysis?

Panelists:

Hany Gobreial, Vice President, Risk and Capital Management, Pacific Life
Nate Molinari, Senior Investment/Treasury Analyst, AEGIS Insurance
Ken Griffin, Head of ALM Strategy, Brighthouse Financial

Moderator: Hal Pedersen, Managing Director, Risk Solutions, Conning

PRESENTATION: Integration of ESG and risk considerations for an insurance investment strategy

• How can ESG investment be used to mitigate portfolio risk?
• Does ESG investing foster better investment decisions, performance and risk management?
• The influence of climate change on investment decisions
• Governance and organizational risk: the harmful impact on invested capital
• Transition risks: climate risk and decarbonizing portfolios

Panelists:

Chris Fowle, Head of Americas, ‎Principles for Responsible Investment
Peter Uhlenbruch, Investor Engagement Officer, Asset Owners Disclosure Project (AODP)
Todd Hedtke, Chief Investment Officer, Allianz Life
Gagik Mikaelyan, Vice President, Senior Specialist, Global Fixed Income Analytics, FactSet
John McKinley, Executive Director, Center for Business, Government and Society, Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth

Moderator: Vincent Huck, Editor, Insurance Asset Risk

Closing Remarks and End of Conference