In the January/February issue of Contingencies, the cover story, “Driving Disruption,” looks at why Tesla and other big tech companies are poised to shake up the insurance space. Also, “Rules Enable Innovation” shows some of the unique professionalism challenges faced by innovative actuaries, and tools that can help. “USQS Roundtable” covers the new U.S. Qualification Standards, and why the Academy is the necessary body to promulgate them.

The December Actuarial Update recaps two Academy professionalism webinars—one on the revised U.S. Qualification Standards, which take effect in January, and one on ethical questions in the context of the Actuarial Board for Counseling and Discipline.

The Pension Committee published an issue brief providing information to help the reader better understand the complexities involved in the measurement of life expectancy estimates.

The C-2 Longevity Risk Work Group submitted comments to the National Association of Insurance Commissioners’ Longevity Risk (A/E) Subgroup on reserve implications of expanding the scope of C-2 Longevity Risk-Based Capital requirements to include longevity reinsurance contracts in the proposed Principle-Based Reserving framework.

The Fall/Winter HealthCheck offers a reminder of the Jan. 14 deadline for comments to the Health Equity Work Group’s (HEWG) request for information on its work assessing whether and how actuarial practices and methods affect health disparities. Also covered in this issue, the HEWG released two discussion briefs, the Annual Meeting and Public Policy Forum included several plenary and breakout sessions on health issues, the Medicaid Committee released a COVID-19 issue paper, and recent legislative and regulatory activity.

The Academy sent a letter to the chairs of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners’ (NAIC’s) Life Actuarial (A) Task Force and Life Risk-Based Capital (E) Working Group indicating an “as-is” availability of its economic scenario generator, the Academy Interest Rate Generator (AIRG) for those regulators and interested parties wishing to modify the AIRG parameters as a basis for producing an updated model.