Annual Meeting Sessions
Tuesday, October 27
401 - Oasis of Clarity: Understanding ASOPs 51 and 56
This session will revisit Actuarial Standards of Practice (ASOPs) 51 and 56, exploring why each Standard exists and what purpose they serve in a desert of assumptions, modeling and risk. These ASOPs require additional accompanying disclosures to actuarial results that need to be reviewed regularly. The session will guide you to the oasis.
Credits:
CPD Credit: 1.50
EA Core Credit: 1.50
EA Formal Credit: 1.50
402 - Plan Terminations: Spotting the Rattlesnake Before It's Too Late
Terminating a plan is easy, right? What can possibly go wrong? In this session, speakers examine pitfalls related to regulatory requirements, data integrity, missing participants, lump sum elections, and annuity purchases. Attendees gain practical insights into how to spot and address these costly surprises before they strike.
Credits:
CPD Credit: 1.50
EA Core Credit: 1.50
EA Formal Credit: 1.50
403 - Incorporating Retirement Income Certainty Into a DC Plan World
As Defined Contribution plans continue to dominate the retirement landscape, the challenge of converting savings into sustainable income has come sharply into focus. This session explores how lifetime income products and solutions can transform 401(k) balances into dependable retirement paychecks. Speakers will examine various market offerings alongside fiduciary considerations and regulatory developments.
Credits:
CPD Credit: 1.50
EA Non-Core Credit: 1.50
EA Formal Credit: 1.50
404 - Total Rewards Strategy: Aligning HR Strategy with Financial Reality
Stop treating your budget as an enemy and start leveraging it as a competitive weapon. This session reveals how to break down the silos between HR and finance, transforming compensation, benefits, and development into a high ROI integrated strategy that fuels retention without breaking the bank. Learn to bridge the gap between people goals and profit margins.
• To incorporate – this is a panel
• Types of wellness programs
• Interactive session
Credits:
CPD Credit: 1.50
405 - AI for Healthcare Actuaries
This is a practical session on where AI can add value in health actuarial work today – automating data prep, accelerating analysis and reporting, and supporting forecasting and insights. We’ll highlight real-use cases, common pitfalls, and the governance actuaries need to get right (privacy/PHI, bias, and documentation). Attendees will leave with a simple framework for adopting AI responsibly and identifying the near-term opportunities in their workflow.
Credits:
CPD Credit: 1.50
406 - Know Your Audience
Emotional intelligence is crucial for actuaries communicating complex, technical data to non-actuarial stakeholders. Our speakers will address stakeholder management, understanding your audience, and using EI to foster trust and clarity.
Credits:
CPD Credit: 1.50
EA Non-Core Credit: 1.50
EA Formal Credit: 1.50
407 - Navigating the OPEB Desert
Learn how to navigate the many changes surrounding OPEB. Topics we will cover include Inflation Reduction Act, Getzen, GASB, ASB, funding practice note, low premium Medicare plans, short-term assumption. Technical issues will be covered in session 302.
Credits:
CPD Credit: 1.50
EA Non-Core Credit: 1.50
EA Formal Credit: 1.50
408 - Multiemployer Plan Mergers
This session will explore the ins and outs of multiemployer plan mergers, with focuses on common pitfalls, plan, union and employer considerations, withdrawal liability, etc.
Credits:
CPD Credit: 1.50
EA Core Credit: 1.50
EA Formal Credit: 1.50
409 - Recent Retirement Governance Changes in Canada
There have been important governance changes in Canada in the fall of 2024 with regard to the management of defined benefit and defined contribution retirement plans. The changes provide revised guidance to employers and require careful attention to how plan managers carry out their oversight responsibilities. This session will include a practicing pension consultant who consults with defined contribution clients on this important subject. Then we will hear from a client in Canada who has successfully implemented the changes and the challenges faced and ways they were overcome. Expect to hear very practical advice not only for Canadian plans but also general governance ideas that have global applicability.
Credits:
CPD Credit: 1.50
003 - Ethics in the Desert: Finding Direction When Landmarks Fade
When familiar landmarks fade, how do you stay oriented? Panelists explore the ethical challenges facing retirement actuaries. Through engaging case studies and interactive discussion, we’ll examine situations where the right path isn’t always clear. Join us to test your instincts, sharpen your ethical compass, and strengthen the principles that guide your professional decisions.
Credits:
CPD Credit: 2.00
EA Ethics Credit: 2.00
EA Formal Credit: 2.00
004 - Professionalism and Ethics for Healthcare Actuaries
Adhering to Actuarial Standards of Practice, applying sound judgement and analytical rigor, prioritizing ethical decision-making and communicating complex results clearly and responsibly for healthcare actuaries is what you can expect to learn in this session through interactive case studies written by the panelists. There will be prizes!
Credits:
CPD Credit: 2.00
Women in Consulting Luncheon
The CCA Women in Consulting Community meets to discuss current issues, outlooks, and news. Neither CCA nor community membership is required to attend.
Credits:
501 - Desert Horizons: A Plan for Sustainable Lifetime Benefits
This session provides an update on the Retirement Security Innovation Initiative’s (RSII) development of a retirement plan featuring fixed costs and lifetime benefits. Attendees will learn about key stakeholder feedback from employers, actuaries, recordkeepers, and investment firms that has shaped the plan.
Credits:
CPD Credit: 1.50
EA Non-Core Credit: 1.50
EA Formal Credit: 1.50
502 - Identifying and Navigating Gaps in Guidance
Retirement plans have been the topic of thousands of pages of law, tax code, regulation, and informal guidance. But somehow there are still things we don’t know – both new and old topics. Panelists discuss some of the items we wish we knew or had guidance on, as well as approaches to take when you find yourself in one of these situations.
Credits:
CPD Credit: 1.50
EA Core Credit: 1.50
EA Formal Credit: 1.50
503 - Annuity Placements (Small, Medium, and Large Insurance Perspective)
Since the 2012 era of GM and Verizon, the Pension Risk Transfer (PRT) market has evolved from the landmark megadeals into a diverse ecosystem where “one size” no longer fits all. This session features a unique panel of representatives from small, medium, and large insurers to discuss the perspectives of the PRT market.
Credits:
CPD Credit: 1.50
EA Non-Core Credit: 1.50
EA Formal Credit: 1.50
504 - How Hospitals and Healthcare Providers are Using AI and Why Consultants Should Pay Attention
AI is already being used across hospitals and provider organizations to improve operations, clinical support, patient flow, documentation, and cost management. Many discussions, however, focus on the technology itself rather than how these tools are being applied in everyday care delivery. This session provides practical examples of how health systems are using AI today and translates those use cases into implementations for cost, utilization, risk, and operations. Attendees will leave with a clearer understanding of what is happening inside health systems and how to apply this knowledge in client conversations and advisory work.
Credits:
CPD Credit: 1.50
505 - Should we do ICHRA? Financial Considerations for Employer Decision Makers
This session builds upon last year’s ICHRA introduction by focusing on the numbers consulting actuaries are asked to produce. After a brief refresher on ICHRA fundamentals, we’ll walk through the core financial considerations employers and their advisors need to evaluate – cost trajectory and budget control, risk transfer and volatility, affordability guardrails, administrative compliance costs, and employee impact tradeoffs. Attendees will leave with a practical framework to help HR and Finance respond to C Suite questions like, “Why aren’t we doing ICHRA?”
Credits:
CPD Credit: 1.50
506 - Migration: What Drives It and How to Better Project It
As birthrates have fallen, migration has become an increasingly important determinant of U.S. population growth and age structure. As a consequence, it has also become an increasingly important determinant of economic performance, fiscal capacity, and the sustainability of government spending commitments. Yet the migration assumptions that actuaries and demographers use in making population projections remain largely ad hoc. The prevailing belief seems to be that migration flows, because they are subject to the vagaries of unexpected crises and policy shifts, are simply too volatile and unpredictable to model. This session seeks to challenge that belief. While it is true that in the near-term migration flows are indeed volatile and unpredictable, in the long term they are closely correlated with broader demographic, economic, and social trends that can be modeled with reasonable confidence. Speakers at this session discuss the push and pull factors that drive migration internationally, and explain how a modeling those same factors can improve long-term domestic population projections.
Credits:
CPD Credit: 1.50
EA Non-Core Credit: 1.50
EA Formal Credit: 1.50
507 - Legislation and Litigation: The Prickly Pair
Come join our session to hear the latest updates on the prickly pair of legislation and litigation affecting public plans, from both statewide and federal perspectives.
Credits:
CPD Credit: 1.50
EA Non-Core Credit: 1.50
EA Formal Credit: 1.50
508 - SFA Retrospective and Next Steps
With the SFA application process winding down, attention now turns to post-SFA compliance and strategies. Speakers will review the rules that apply to plans that receive SFA and discuss investment and other strategies. The panel will also reflect on the program and offer views on the successes and failures.
Credits:
CPD Credit: 1.50
EA Non-Core Credit: 1.50
EA Formal Credit: 1.50
509 - Capital Markets - What Can Go Wrong?
Speakers provide an update on capital markets, including historically high equity valuations. Speakers identify some scenarios for how things could play out going forward, with a focus on the downside risks.
Credits:
CPD Credit: 1.50
EA Non-Core Credit: 1.50
EA Formal Credit: 1.50
Retirement Security Innovation Initiative Forum
Members of the Retirement Security Innovation Initiative provide an update on their activities.
Credits:
Healthcare Community Forum
The CCA Healthcare Community meets to discuss current issues, outlooks, and news. Neither CCA nor community membership is required to attend.
Credits:
Multiemployer Plans Forum
The CCA Multiemployer Plans Community meets to discuss current issues, outlooks, and news. Neither CCA nor community membership is required to attend.
Credits:
Public Plans Community Forum
The CCA Public Plans Community meets to discuss current issues, outlooks, and news. Neither CCA nor community membership is required to attend.